


Cold Fusion: True North

by dalniente



Series: Cold Fusion [2]
Category: Megamind (2010)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2020-12-07 23:36:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 72,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20984288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dalniente/pseuds/dalniente
Summary: Metro City is under repair, and an angry young man wants to make a name for himself. More importantly, Megamind and Roxanne are together...but how long can Megamind expect it to last? Rated M for later chapters.





	1. Chapter 1

Megamind is tired.

More than tired, actually. It's only a little over a month since Titan and there haven't been any new villains threatening Metro so far, and Megamind is _exhausted_.

So far, his new, non-villainous life is proceeding more smoothly than he was expecting it to. Thinking up ways to fix and improve the city is devastatingly simple. Megamind is still trying to stay out of the way for the most part, but executing his plans is easy with several thousand tireless hovering machines constantly waiting for direction. A new manufacturing plant has opened towards the north of town to accommodate the increases in city development and planning.

So far, the only major downside Megamind can acknowledge is that he hasn't been able to get his hands dirty in a while. He hasn't had time. His meetings with the city's zoning boards leave him jittery and dry-mouthed and longing for the opportunity to pick up even a screwdriver, but that isn't how things go, these days: he writes plans and he meets with people about writing plans and then other people see that the plans are completed. It feels _weird_. Not necessarily _bad_, but he and Minion have been a two-man show since day one. Relying on others to carry out his plans makes Megamind very, very nervous. There are—too many variables, too many people involved in the rebuild and related expansion projects. Even Megamind can't keep tabs on all of them. Not that he would have time, even if he could keep track of everything; his schedule is solidly booked for the next two weeks and the third is filling up quickly.

At least he's free for today. He has been adamant about not scheduling anything today.

Even though he doesn't have to work half as hard physically as he used to, he's more tired than he can ever remember being. Which makes no _sense_, it's so _annoying!_ Clearly he just needs to push through. The rebuild is going well, and the people of Metro are beginning to accept him…granted, most are still wary when they see him in person, but! Baby steps. He delegates to the brainbots, Minion runs the Lair, and Roxanne…

Roxanne.

He hasn't seen her for more than an hour at a stretch in nearly three weeks. And when they're out together, she's…not herself. She seems to swing back and forth: one minute, she'll be laughing and leaning against him as they walk, and the next she'll make some hurried excuse about why she has to leave, if not right _now_ then at least very soon. If she doesn't, she gets short-tempered and tight-lipped, and those moods always make Megamind worry.

But he doesn't blame her, really. He broke her trust. He assumes it's only natural that Bernard's face would remind her of that.

It's doubly difficult right now because Bernard turned up in the laundry a week or so ago, so Megamind can't impersonate him anymore, and shortly after that, Roxanne left for Europe on business. She's working on a documentary installment piece detailing the homelessness situations in various tourist hotspots around the world and comparing them to Metro City—the last Megamind heard, she was in Amsterdam. She calls every couple of days, which helps.

She also sounds much more relaxed over the phone than she has in person for quite a while. Happier. He's…not sure how to take that. He hopes it's just because she isn't looking at Bernard, and not because she's more relaxed away from him.

He hopes she's happier with him than she is without him. Megamind always feels better when she's with him. Steadier on his feet. The volume of human contact he's sustaining these days is overwhelming on multiple levels, but Roxanne, at least, is usually a safe haven.

Because, all things considered and despite the rough spots, things between them do seem to be proceeding fairly well. At least, as far as Megamind can tell. Roxanne spends a lot of her free time at the Lair, enough time that there are now two toothbrushes beside Megamind's bathroom sink. He is constantly surprised at how comfortable she seems around all his machinery and failed experiments and oddities. The brainbots, especially. And she gets along fabulously with Minion.

So they have their ups and downs, but Roxanne seems happy enough when they're at home together, and Megamind knows _he's_ happy—his heart leaps into his throat every time he sees her, and still he thinks he might die when she smiles at him. But happiness itself carries its own set of problems for him. It's wonderful, but it also sets him on edge. He's only really been _happy_ a few times in his life, and it always seems to be just before something awful happens. Every time he feels himself smile, anymore, he starts to feel a little bit sick and panicky. And then the questions start running through his mind like they always do…

How long will this last? How long can he _expect_ it to last? Is Roxanne truly happy or is he misreading her? Is he flubbing this whole thing spectacularly and she's just too polite to say something? When will she leave for good? Is this the last time he'll see her? Is this the last smile she'll send him? How long—

He has absolutely no point of reference, no way to even begin to answer any of those questions. And he hates it. Megamind's whole life revolves around answers to difficult questions; not being able to answer these is deeply unsettling. He's flying through fog without a compass; even if he had one, there's no magnetic pole to tell the needle which way to point.

He's starting to wonder which would be more painful: to wait for Roxanne to tear this new happiness from him, or to turn his back on her now, before he becomes too attached?

He knows which one would be _safer_, but he's trying not to think about it.

* * *

_Across the city, a man with too many books and too little experience watches his flock of tiny particles gather and then disperse behind double-thick capillary shields. Like clockwork, he tends to his calculations and his quarks, and the fire of creation burns in his eyes._

_Soon_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> omg remember when I occasionally wrote short chapters????
> 
> ...neither do I, but apparently it happened


	2. Chapter 2

As soon as Roxanne sees the driver, her heart sinks. _Of all the random, rotten luck_. She would have waited for a different taxi if she had recognized him beforehand, but it's too late now. She's just finished wrestling her luggage into the backseat and she isn't about to drag it all back out, even if it would be wiser to wait for someone who hasn't taken her to the Lair before.

City the size of Metro; how the heck does she wind up with the same cabbie twice in as many months?

She slides in next to her suitcase and pulls the door closed after her, and the driver glances back at her in the rearview mirror, dark eyes dancing with amusement. "I see you're still in one piece," he greets her. "Where to, Miss Ritchi?"

She groans. She should have him take her to her apartment so he doesn't suspect anything, but…she'll only get another cab from there and take it to the Lair, and then she'll have to pay twice as much and she's spent quite enough on this trip as it is. She got some great footage from Amsterdam, more than enough to finish the piece she's been working on, but she is still several hundred dollars in the hole thanks to the extra shots she picked up. It's a small price to pay for security—her grip on her camera bag tightens unconsciously—but still. Her job pays well, but she isn't exactly a millionaire.

And she's _jet-lagged _and _tired _and she hasn't seen one single brainbot in what feels like _forever_.

"The same place as before, please," she tells him, and he shrugs.

"Abandoned power plant by the docks it is," he announces, putting the car in gear. "Your funeral."

As they pull away from the midtown bus depot, Roxanne tilts her head up next to the window and marvels yet again at how far along the Metro Tower rebuild is. The amount of work that the combined efforts of an ex-criminal mastermind, the city's zoning board, and a small army of brainbots can accomplish in just over a month is really incredible. The Tower is still far from finished, but it wouldn't be half as far along as it is without Megamind's help.

Megamind.

Roxanne will feel better once she's gotten the film footage to the guys at the office. She doesn't usually do documentary pieces; this has been looming over her head for ages, and then Bernard turned up again, madder than hell and with good reason to be. And Roxanne made the mistake of talking to her brother about the whole _Bernard thing _the night it went down, so now her _mother_ is asking questions…

Luckily, she only seems to know Roxanne is no longer interested in Bernard. Nothing further. But still.

So Roxanne hasn't been in a great mood, lately. She's been more reactive than usual—downright snappish, at times—and she knows it, but…well, hopefully she'll be able to relax a little now that she's back on solid ground with her job, at least.

Documentaries. Roxanne _hates_ documentary work; she's much better on the spot than when afforded the opportunity for multiple takes. Her boss knows this, but it's impossible to assign projects to people who love them all the time. At least she shouldn't have to do any more anytime soon.

And hopefully she and Megamind will be able to go _out_ somewhere again soon. She's looking forward to not having to see Bernard's face every time she looks up. That has been harder than she was expecting. Not just because she'd much rather see Megamind as himself, but also…knowing the _real _Bernard was lost somewhere was really starting to get to her.

She shakes her head and looks around for a distraction; she'll be home soon enough and she's too tired for any real introspection. There is an orange-and-white book on the passenger seat that looks promising, and she leans forward to reach it.

The cab swerves a little. "Hey, hey!" the driver exclaims. "Seat belt, lady. I will _not_ be held responsible if we crash and you go through the windshield."

"Are you saying you're a bad driver?" She looks at the book. _Rules for Radicals_, by Saul Alinsky. _A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals_.

"I'm a very good driver," he protests. "It's the other bozos out there you gotta watch out for. And I actually will be held responsible, so buckle up."

Roxanne snorts, but buckles her seat belt and settles back, flipping the book open to a dog-eared page. _I remember this_, she thinks. She'd had to read it back in college, for one of her poli sci requirements.

Roxanne looks up at the rearview mirror, catches the driver's eye. "Hey," she says. "Can I borrow this?"

He grimaces. "Aw geez, Miss Ritchi, I wish I could lend it to you, but it's my daughter's. She needs it for class."

Roxanne tosses it back on the seat where she found it, a little disappointed. She suspects Megamind would have enjoyed reading it.

Of course, that's if he hasn't read it already. It does seem to be the sort of thing he would have run across on his way to becoming an evil overlord, and finding books he _hasn't_ read at some point or another is difficult. Roxanne supposes she shouldn't be surprised about that, but she is—her prior encounters with him had given her the impression that he was equal amounts brilliant and insane, but not particularly cultured.

For the most part, though, Megamind seems to be enjoying his move into social acceptance, even if it does mean he can no longer call various linguistics professors at all hours of the night just to harass them in Old English about their pronunciation.

(From what Roxanne has been able to gather, Megamind's pronunciation of Old English is more exact than it is of modern English. That one threw her for a loop, but, _Old English had rules_, Megamind said, disgruntled. _Unlike modern English, which is Frankenstein's monster's own nightmare of grammar and spelling_.)

But it's entirely reasonable that Megamind should have an extensive knowledge base. He is a genius several times over, by Earth standards, and eternally curious—he'll absorb whatever information he can get his hands on, regardless of whether it applies to mechanical engineering or physical chemistry or linguistics. And his parents were the only ones of their species to figure out faster-than-light space travel in time to send their son into the void, so it's possible he has some genetic predisposition for exceptional intelligence, as well.

So, yes, he is legitimately smart despite the veritable wall of clownery he hides behind. He still plays up the buffoon in public, and frequently around the Lair, as well, but considering how serious and careful he can be sometimes when he's working…

Roxanne estimates his true nature falls somewhere between "circus clown" and "stuffy academic," but that's true of nearly everyone. She chuckles to herself. She's known him for years, been dating him for months—well, only a month with _this _face, but quite a while in total—and he's still full of surprises.

"Meter's running, Miss Ritchi."

The driver's voice startles her out of her reverie, and she jumps and looks around. The taxi is parked a block down from the Lair.

"Sorry," she gasps, and scrambles out of the car, tugging her suitcase and camera bag after her.

"You need any help with those?"

"No, no, I'm fine," Roxanne assures him when he moves to get out of the taxi. She pushes some money into his hand and turns to leave.

"Here," his voice calls her back. He's leaning out his window. "You've given me too much again. Did the same thing last time. I can't accept this, it isn't right."

The tip she'd given him is far above standard, but Roxanne shakes her head. "For your continued discretion," she tells him, and he blinks. Then he grins and taps his nose with one finger.

"Hold on," he says, and this time he does get out. He leans against the top of the car, scribbles something on a scrap of paper, then folds it in half and hands it to her. "You need discretion, Miss Ritchi, you give me a call. Any hour. Fee'll be higher, but you're not the first. Sometimes folks need a little extra help."

Roxanne smiles gratefully and shakes his hand. _He's not bad_, she thinks, waving as he drives away. A glance down at the paper tells her his name is Akos Haskins, and he has a 906 phone number. New contact! Excellent.

She grins, then shifts her purse to her shoulder and hurries up a block to the secret entrance. The panel is easy to find now she knows where it is, and she thumbs the door open impatiently. Three nights abroad and then flying in last night at six PM and taking the intercity bus line north from GRF International has completely messed up her sense of time. It may be nearly noon, but all Roxanne wants to do is get into the nice cool Lair and go to sleep.

No rest for the wicked, apparently. The grating, high-pitched whine of a circular saw hits her like a ton of bricks as soon as she walks through the door. She closes it after her and hooks her elbow around the handle of her suitcase, then shoves her fingers in her ears. It's not a comfortable position—she has to bend almost double and hobble like Igor towards the source of the noise—but aural health takes precedence over dignity and she's too tired to think of just leaving her bags at the door.

Megamind is in his metalworking shop on the ground level of the Lair's turbine building, standing in the shadow of the high-pressure turbines and moisture separator reheaters, leaning over a piece of sheet metal with a blowtorch while Minion feeds the metal steadily through the screeching saw.

Roxanne leans her bag against the wall and then stands back and waits. There's no way she is taking one step closer to that shower of sparks in just her regular clothes. She did that only once, about a week into the relationship, and Megamind nearly bit her head off.

"Don't get me wrong," he said, once he had calmed down a little, "I don't mind you being here while I'm working! I might even ask for your help on some of the smaller projects—you're good with the brainbots and they're fairly easy to repair. But you _have to wear protective gear_. The stuff I work with is _dangerous_."

Initially, she was startled that he had actually snapped at her, and worried about what he might be like if he ever got truly angry. But the last part had eased that worry almost entirely. Megamind rarely says what he actually feels—though he is getting better at it—but he wears his heart on his sleeve and Roxanne can hear "_I don't want you to get hurt_" loud and clear.

Their backs are to her, so she watches them work until they finish the sheet. They were already nearly finished when she came in, or she would have just gone and dropped her things off in Megamind's room and returned with ear plugs. As it is, it probably isn't even a whole minute before Minion flips a switch and the saw slows down and the fan shuts off. Megamind stifles the valve on his plasma torch and rolls his shoulders, sends a ripple down his spine, and pushes his welding mask up and away from his face.

"Good work," he says approvingly, looking at the cut metal and stretching. "I think we're getting this. Let's take a quick break—my titration should be nearly done, so I want to—" He turns around and his face lights up. "You're back!"

Minion waves as Megamind all but sprints towards her. Roxanne laughingly holds up her hands to try to ward him off and backs away. "Megamind, I've been on a plane for nine hours and a bus for ten, I stink, don't _touch_ me, I'm gross."

He wraps both arms around her anyway, smiling like sunrise. "Don't ca-aare," he singsongs in her ear. "Don't ca-aare, you're ba-aack…"

His heavy apron is hot from the fire and covered in metal dust and scorch marks, and his protective gloves are scratchy even through Roxanne's tee-shirt, but she doesn't mind. She pulls her head to the side and presses a quick kiss to the corner of his mouth. He tastes like oil and smoke and there's a sooty smudge down the side of his face and over one eye. He hums happily and knocks his forehead against hers as best he can while wearing a welding mask up over the top of his head.

"Okay," he says after a moment. "Maybe you smell a _little_ funny."

She laughs and shoves him away. "You're a goofball, you know that? Ugh, I want a shower and then I am going to sleep for a month."

Megamind opens his mouth to say something, but Minion interrupts by clanking over and sweeping both of them into the air in a bone-crushing hug.

_I missed this_, Roxanne thinks as Megamind kicks and squawks a protest, and she bursts into exhausted laughter and hugs Minion's dome. "Good to see you, Minion!"

"You too, Miss Ritchi," he says, setting her on her feet again. Megamind jumps nimbly down and straightens his apron, straight-faced and glowering, the picture of offended dignity. Minion grins and stage-whispers, "_He sulked the whole time you were gone_."

Megamind spins. "_Minion_—_!_"

"Oh _stop_," Roxanne tells him, and reaches up and swings the welding mask back down over his face. His snort of laughter echoes out from behind it.

"I'm so glad you're home," he says, lifting the mask again and smiling at her. "You go take your shower, I've got a precipitate to check on."

He turns and trots off, jabbing Minion with a sharp elbow on his way past. "Lunch at twelve-thirty, Sir," Minion calls after him, and Megamind flaps a spindly hand in acknowledgment before disappearing around a corner.

Minion turns back to Roxanne. "I expect to see you at lunch, too, Miss Ritchi. I know you're jet-lagged, but the fastest way to readjust is to try and adhere to normal sleep patterns." He takes her suitcase and tucks it under one arm before she can tell him to leave it. "I've _got_ it," he says when she tries to protest. "Honestly, there's no point in you dragging it all that way when it's no trouble for me."

Roxanne huffs a little, but she's already learned there's no use trying to argue with Minion. "Normal sleep patterns, my eye," she mutters. "I'd like to see Megamind sleep through the night."

Minion grins. "Do you know what a Circadian rhythm is?"

Roxanne shakes her head.

"It's a roughly twenty-four hour cycle that's regulated by your body's internal systems," Minion tells her. "It's what tells you when to sleep and when to wake up. Most animals and plants have a Circadian rhythm of some kind—one kind of plant folds its leaves at night and opens them during the day. They keep to that twenty-four hour cycle even when grown in total darkness. It's why you're jet-lagged. You can re-train your body to a new time zone, but it does take a little while to adjust." He pauses. "It's also why Sir's sleep patterns differ from yours."

Roxanne blinks. "I'm not sure I follow. He's jet-lagged? As far as I know, he's never left the city in his life."

"Miss Ritchi, have you forgotten what he is?"

She stares up at him, uncomprehending. He's laughing at her; his gold eyes are dancing and his toothy smile is wider than usual.

"You _have_," he marvels. "I _told_ him you didn't care, but he insisted it was too difficult to look past. Huh."

Roxanne is usually pretty good at figuring out what Minion is talking about—he tends to be easier to understand than Megamind is, at any rate—but this time she honestly has no idea what he means. She squints at him a little, shakes her head again.

"He's an alien, Miss Ritchi. Our planet's cycle was shorter than yours is. He dances to a different drum."

If Roxanne were a more dramatic person, she would have slapped herself in the forehead. She _had_ forgotten. Or, not _forgotten_, rather; it's pretty hard to _forget_ Megamind isn't from Earth, but really, he's just…Megamind. She's used to him. Sometimes it is hard to remember just how fundamentally different from her he truly is.

"_That's_ why he keeps such odd hours," she says.

Minion nods. "Yep! He's mostly attuned to Earth's cycles, at this point, but there's no way for him to ever completely re-regulate his body's baseline." He sighs a little. "To be fair, though, his patterns are weird even by his people's standards. There aren't enough hours in the day for him to do all the things he wants to."

Roxanne smiles. She's noticed that. "So what would be a normal pattern for him?"

Minion shrugs. "_I_ don't remember. Something like, sleep from two until six or seven, PM and AM. That's pretty close, I think. But he hates wasting daylight, so he stays up through the first sleep-cycle, and then he hits what he calls an exhaustion high and he says that's just fun, so he stays awake through that…honestly? Sometimes if he stays awake for too long, he just passes out and sleeps for a day. He hates when that happens."

Roxanne's mind is spinning. They're standing outside the door to Megamind's room, but she doesn't want to just stop talking about this—it's _interesting_. "What about you?"

Minion looks taken aback. "Me?"

"Don't you have any problems with sleeping? You're an alien, too, aren't you?"

Minion shrugs again. "My people were deep-sea creatures, originally. I'm built for total darkness," he says, and Roxanne remembers how he spun and floated, dazed, after the explosion of blinding light that 'killed' Metro Man. "Besides, I'm his minion. I would tune myself to his biorhythms, if he had any sort of regular pattern. He doesn't, so I follow the Lair's reactors, instead. Mostly I just stay awake through the danger hours, then power down when he turns his attention to…quieter pursuits."

Then he shakes himself a little. "You need a shower and I need to go make lunch. We can talk about this more later, if you want."

Roxanne nods, and Minion puts her suitcase down on the floor next to her. "Thanks, Minion. You're the best."

He smiles back at her as he continues down the hall. "I'm just happy you're home safe."

So is Roxanne. She wasn't gone long and she enjoys traveling, but she really missed the frantic here-there-everywhere atmosphere of the Lair. She spends more time here than at her apartment, anymore.

She's halfway to the shower when what Minion said about biorhythms sinks in. Roxanne has always assumed he and Megamind work so well together because they've known each other almost all their lives, but it's certainly possible that they're linked to each other on a deeper level.

She frowns a little. She really has no idea what Megamind's brain is capable of beyond intellectual pursuits. Are he and Minion attuned to each other—whatever Minion meant by that—or is it a strictly one-way street? And if they're linked on a mental level, and the link _does_ go both ways, how deep does it go? Is there a chance that Megamind might someday be able to read her thoughts?

It's a bit of a stretch, and probably unlikely, but something about the idea of sharing her private thoughts with someone else settles like a rock in the pit of her stomach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going through screenshots from the movie recently, and I realized while looking at an [external shot of the Lair](https://i2.wp.com/caps.pictures/201/0-megamind/full/megamind-disneyscreencaps.com-4006.jpg?zoom=1.25&strip=all)...it looks like an abandoned power plant. I had Evil Lair in a big warehouse before, which works, but a power plant makes sense for Megamind, too! There's a lot we don't see in the movie, a lot Roxanne runs past on her way over to Megamind's idea cloud in Main Storage. But we see high ceilings, tall windows, stairs and balconies and pipes of all sizes, all of which does fit with some [reactor power plant diagrams](https://imgur.com/gallery/H4UCI) I've found. (I doubt the building the Lair is in STARTED as a nuclear plant, but...Megamind does what he wants.) So I'm trying to flesh the Lair out just a little bit in terms of internal description, because reactors have all kinds of fun stuff in them to play with and work around. And also because I like looking at diagrams of nuclear reactors!


	3. Chapter 3

Roxanne dresses before exiting the bathroom after her shower. If she doesn't get dressed in the bathroom, she runs the risk of sitting down on the bed just for a moment, and if she does _that_, she's pretty sure she'll probably fall asleep right then and there. _If you give a mouse a cookie_, she thinks ruefully, and slips on the fuzzy moccasins she's taken to wearing around the Lair. They're good house shoes—they slip on and off easily, they keep her feet warm, and they're closed-toed. Megamind has been very clear about how he feels about sandals in his various labs and workshops.

There are _rules_ about the Lair, which bothers Roxanne sometimes, but she completely understands that none of them are frivolous. Most exist as safety precautions, which she can appreciate—she's comfortable around flamethrowers and chainsaws because she's used to them, not because they aren't dangerous.

She just wishes Megamind would get around to writing the rules down.

Her stomach grumbles at her, reminding her about lunch—she feels like it should be dinner—and she pauses only to grab her camera bag before hurrying down the hall into the kitchen.

Megamind is already there, elbow-deep in a ham sandwich that he waves at her when she comes in.

"Sorry I'm late," she says. "It's good to have a shower with real water pressure again."

He cocks his head, chewing like mad, and Roxanne resists the urge to die laughing.

"The hotels I stayed at had really old plumbing," she explains, grinning. "The showers weren't much. The baths were nice, though."

Megamind swallows, ducking his chin forward a little as he does so. It's more of a gulp, really; he's not a patient person, and he asks, "Why don't they renovate?" before he even has time to inhale.

She shrugs. "Part of the appeal of some of the old buildings is that they're historic. Renovating could lower the value of the rooms, depending on what they're advertising. Also, people are going to stay anyway, so why bother." She pulls out a chair that grates squeakily on the cement floor and drops into it with a sigh. "Megamind, listen, are you psychic?"

He blinks a few times, blindsided. "Come again?"

Minion slides a plate over to Roxanne, and she nods her thanks and starts eating. "Minion said he could tune himself to your biorhythms," she says. "What does that mean?"

He sends Minion a Look.

"_What?_" Minion asks, somehow managing to look innocent and defensive at the same time. "I was telling her about why you never sleep."

That's all he has to say. No further explanation is required. Roxanne can almost see Megamind flashing through her prior conversation with Minion, filling in the gaps.

_Recent return from overseas = jet-lag. She mentioned a nap, jet-lag + nap = longer re-adjustment period; longer re-adjustment period = detrimental to normal sleep patterns; intention to nap + presence at lunch = not napping, so something happened to change her mind and the last person she talked to was Minion—Extrapolation: Minion told her not to go to sleep._

_Fact: Minion doesn't talk about our mutuality unless prompted, and Roxanne is tired and probably in a snarky mood—Extrapolation: Roxanne picked up on the incongruity of Minion preaching the benefits of normal sleep patterns and my inability to sleep more than four hours at a stretch and commented on it._

_Extrapolation: Minion explained why my sleeping patterns are off._

_Extrapolation: Roxanne noticed Minion sleeps regularly and asked why he was able to adjust to Earth's light cycle._

_Conclusion: Minion told Roxanne he isn't attuned to Earth, he's attuned to the Lair's reactors because I'm a freak even by our standards and he just needs to do his own thing_.

All told, it takes him about three seconds to come to the right conclusion. "Ah-ha-ha," he says, and nods. "No. No, not in the sense you're thinking, no. I'm not a telepath. Minion and I…" He glances sideways at Minion, hesitates. "We're…linked, yes, but on a biochemical level. Not psychic. Not as far as I know."

Roxanne exhales. "So you won't be able to read my thoughts?"

He opens his mouth and then stops, darting another quick, begging glance at Minion, who tilts his body meaningfully in Roxanne's direction and raises his eyebrows. _Answer her_. Megamind winces, looks back at Roxanne. "Ahhm. Not as such, no. Not thoughts."

Roxanne's eyes narrow but she doesn't say anything, just waits. Megamind looks very nervous; his green eyes are flicking back and forth between hers until suddenly he rounds on Minion without warning. "Did you _have _to tell her about that? _Now?_ It couldn't have waited?"

"I told you yesterday, Sir. You're in deep enough already."

Megamind groans and slumps back in his chair, rests his head in one hand and closes his eyes. He looks almost pained.

"Tell me what?" Roxanne says slowly.

Megamind glances up at her. "My species…has some…" He sighs and waves a hand in an inarticulate, frustrated gesture. "_Minor_ empathic capabilities. That's all. I'm not—I'm not a _telepath_, I can't hear your thoughts. Mostly it's just that I pick up on other people's feelings."

Roxanne leans back, blinking at him. "So, you can feel what I'm feeling. Will I be able to feel you?"

"Ah, no." Megamind shakes his head. "No, I can't feel what you're feeling, and no, you cannot link back to me. Like I said, it's…not a mental thing."

"But you and Minion—"

"Minion and I share a bond, yes, but we are from the same _planet_," Megamind says flatly. "There are processes and chemical compounds running through our bodies that are completely foreign to you and totally incompatible with your body's chemical receptors. Such as _they_ are," he adds, with an oddly bitter twist to his inflection. "It's—my body is—more heavily reliant on a chemical biosystem than yours." He scrunches his face down, looking anywhere and everywhere but at Roxanne. "That's where the empathy comes from, although _empathy _isn't really even the right word. It doesn't make me feel what you're feeling, I just—the, the emotional auras of people around me—I feel them physically, like a—taste? A smell?" He shrugs sharply, slicking his elbows to his sides the way he does sometimes when he's stressed. "But _empathy_ is, it's the closest—it's not a _mental_ link, it's—I produce pheromones to augment emotional expression. My species evolved to pick up on the emotional pheromones of those around us. It's—I don't—I don't know how to explain this."

She watches him, puzzled. He doesn't usually stammer like this. "Is there a problem I'm not seeing, here?" she asks, and he utters a laugh so sharply hysterical that she jumps.

"Problem!" he exclaims. "No, no _problem_. It's just, _you can't do it_. None of you can. You can't shut it off, you can't pick up on what I'm—I mean, put both of us in a boardroom and I'm effectively _screaming_ my head off trying to make myself understood over the _cacophony_ of everybody else in the room, and you're just _sitting there_ like a _lump_ or a _tumor_ or something and you don't feel a thing—"

"Did you just call me a tumor?"

"—and Minion told you how the dehydration gun affects nerves? After the whole Titan thing?" He leans forward, gesturing wildly with both hands. "Well, to add to that, I can regenerate nervous tissue so my pain threshold is _extremely _high as long as an injury doesn't break the skin, but emotions-wise if I don't get enough caffeine to dull my receptors it's just—it's _constant overload, all the time_ for me because _none of you_ know how to regulate your exocrine glands!_You're _okay," he adds, glancing at her for a bare second before he looks away again, "you're wonderful! but I'm spending _so much time_ around _so many humans_ these days and it's, it's all just this huge mish-mash of _input _and _none _of it even makes any _sense!_" He throws his hands up in the air and then collapses back into his chair, panting and staring at Roxanne. A moment later he says, "And I just called you a tumor, yes. I'm sorry. I just…" He scrubs his hands down his face, then crosses his arms on the table and slumps face-down onto them.

Roxanne waits for a minute before asking quietly, "Feel better?"

"Mnnng."

"Coffee, Sir," Minion says, setting a mug on the table by Megamind's plate. He holds up the pot and points at it, raising his eyebrows at Roxanne.

She nods. A lot. Rapidly. What she _wants_ is some time to fully process all that, but coffee will have to do. She supposes it made enough sense to go on, anyway.

Across from her, Megamind hasn't moved, and Roxanne reaches across the table and scoots his mug closer to him. "Drink your caffeine, Space Oddity. I…think I get what you're saying."

He lifts his head and stares at her. "You're _still_ not angry."

She grins quizzically at him over the rim of her mug and shakes her head, then blinks when the lukewarm liquid hits her tongue. She knows decaf when she tastes it. What is Minion playing at? "Why on earth would I be angry?" she asks aloud. "Megamind, all you did was answer a question. Maybe you answered a little more…_vigorously_ than I was expecting, but…" She trails off, shrugs.

Megamind shakes his head in disbelief, then tilts it back. Roxanne pauses to watch.

Megamind doesn't _drink_ coffee, exactly—not the same way she drinks it. He just tips his head back, opens his mouth, and pours the liquid down his throat. When the mug is empty, he slams it onto the table and swallows with a painful-sounding gulp and looks back at Roxanne, who's gazing at him in bewildered amazement.

"What?"

"How do you do that? Just pour it straight down light that?"

He stares at her for a moment, and then his mouth pulls into a grin and he points at his neck. "Total control," he says smugly.

Her eyes narrow again, but this time she's grinning. "Bull."

"No, no," he insists. "It's true. Total control."

Then the smile slips off his face, and his expression blanks for a moment as he inhales and his pupils blow wide, and then his face relaxes completely. "Ahhh. _There _we go." His eyes fall closed and his head rolls to the side, and the tension bleeds out of his thin frame. "Minion, you're _amaaaazing_," he sighs as he melts into a smiling puddle on the table, his head pillowed on one outstretched arm.

"Thank you, Sir," Minion says lightly. "I try. Incidentally, did you know you can buy caffeine tablets?"

Roxanne snorts. One of Megamind's eyes slits open at Minion. "Really? Pure?"

"Mostly. Cheap, too," Minion says, but he catches Roxanne's eye behind Megamind's back, mouths, _He should go to sleep_. He closes his eyes and tips to one side briefly.

Roxanne had been hoping to show them what she came up with in Amsterdam, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen for a while. Well, that's okay; the surprise will keep. She pushes her chair back.

It's like there's a string running from her to Megamind; he sits up as soon as she rises, green eyes searching worriedly. "What? Where are you going?"

She smiles. "You," she says, "are going to go take a nap."

"But it's still light out," he protests.

Roxanne rolls her eyes and comes around the table, pulls him to his feet. "I don't care. You need to sleep. Go on. I'll catch up with you in a minute, I just want to help Minion with the dishes." Minion, for once, does not object. He knows a cover story when he hears one.

"It'll mess everything up, though." Megamind looks genuinely confused. "You won't be able to sleep tonight."

"Neither will you," she points out, "and I'm looking forward to keeping up with you for as long as I can. Go. I'll be in soon."

Megamind looks up at Minion, who scowls down at his friend. "You already know what I'm going to say, Sir."

Megamind blinks, then grins in tired defeat. "Yeah, okay," he mutters, and turns and slouches out.

Neither Roxanne nor Minion move until they hear the echo of his bedroom door closing behind him. Minion opens his mouth, but Roxanne beats him to it. "Shame on you," she says quietly, "drugging him like that."

He shakes his head. "You don't understand."

"So tell me." Roxanne levels a stare at him that could freeze mercury as she pulls the white plastic bottle out from where he had nudged it behind the coffee maker so she can glance at the label. "What is so dire that you have to slip…four hundred milligrams of straight caffeine into his drink _without telling him?_"

"Eight hundred," Minion says, and Roxanne lifts her eyebrows. "Miss Ritchi…when he said overload, he _meant_ overload." Now that Megamind is gone, his carefree façade is beginning to crack. He looks worried, _very_ worried. Roxanne already knows he worries about Megamind a lot more than he lets on, but this is the first time since he turned up at her door with Megamind in healing torpor that she's seen it so blatantly. "I _think _he'll become desensitized to your chemical signature over time, but it's still fairly early. He's…right now, he picks up on _everything_. He sees everything. It's like…it's like a powerful hallucinogen," he tells her, seizing on the only analogy he can think of that works. "He sees how everything around him _tastes_. Out here, in isolation, it's usually not so much that it bothers him, but…Miss Ritchi, I'm worried he's spending so much time around humans these days that he might be losing track of what _he_ is in all the mash-up of other chemicals. And with you here…?" Minion trails off, turning from side to side in his dome. "He's nearly tripled his coffee intake in the past two months."

Roxanne frowns. "Am I hurting him, by being here?"

Minion hesitates. "You…confuse him? I think? He's tired a lot, and he isn't thinking clearly. His behavior has become…more erratic than it usually is." He blinks, and hastily adds, "Don't _leave_, though. He'll figure this out; he figures everything out if he has enough time. And, and it isn't you, really, it's—I think the real culprit is all these meetings he keeps going to."

"He mentioned boardrooms, specifically," Roxanne agrees, troubled. She hasn't noticed many major differences in Megamind's behavior, but then, she's never seen how he is around the Lair. "How did he ever manage to survive in public school? Or prison?"

"He only started developing the empathy when we were…oh, thirteen or fourteen, I think? That's when he started smoking. A lot. Pretty much constantly, if he wasn't in class. Cigarettes, incense…" He sighs. "It wasn't a _good_ alternative, but the smoke helped block his receptors. It helped him keep a clearer head."

"Good lord," Roxanne says softly. A rough sort of lesser-of-two-evils situation, then. Chronic overstimulation from an environmental factor no one around you can understand or help with, or a smoking habit. She honestly can't say she would have acted otherwise.

"He doesn't smoke much, anymore," Minion assures her, misinterpreting her tone. "And I do try to help where I can with these new endeavors, it's just. _Hard_. People don't…they don't really listen to me." He swallows, his delicate fins wilting somewhat. "They always want him to come in and confirm what I tell them. I just…I worry."

She bites her lip, pushing down the little flare of anger that pulses through the back of her mind at _people don't listen to me; they want him to come and confirm_. This is entirely outside her experience; she has no idea what kind of assistance Minion might accept from her, if any. "Well, if there's anything I can do to help, let me know, okay?" but he just blinks down at her, confused.

"What? But I don't…but if you help, they'll know you and Sir are—"

"To help _you_, Minion," she clarifies. "If I can do anything to help _you_, let me know. Okay?"

Minion blinks again, and for a moment his brow ridge pulls up and his chin does a thing and all his dorsal bulbs go straight, but all he says is, "Oh! Oh, I—thank you. Thank you, Miss Ritchi, I—I will."

So she sends him a smile and stands, gathers up the plates and silverware and carries them over to the sink, but he nudges her gently out of the way as soon as she turns on the tap.

"I'll take it from here," he says. "You go get some rest."

Roxanne smiles up at him, confused. "But you said—"

The look Minion sends her speaks volumes, and she chuckles. "Okay. Rest. Okay. Thanks, Minion."

* * *

Megamind is already in bed when she gets there, curled up on his side with his eyes closed. Roxanne gets into her pajamas as quietly as she can manage, but as soon as she climbs carefully in beside him, he stretches a little and murmurs, "How much did he give me?"

Roxanne blinks at him, then almost kicks herself. _Minion, you're amazing_. Of course Megamind noticed immediately, of course he would have recognized the difference. "Eight hundred milligrams."

"Eight hundred…" He sighs a little, sniffs. He doesn't open his eyes. "Caffeine _pills_," he says softly. "Why didn't I think of that? It would be so simple."

Roxanne settles next to him, though not as close as usual. "You probably had more important things on your mind. Megamind, does my being here hurt you, at all?"

He opens his eyes and looks over at her, and then he smiles. "Come here," he murmurs, and pushes her shoulder gently until she rolls over so he can pull close against her back, so he can wrap both his wiry arms around her and bury his nose and mouth in her hair. "No," he says softly, his voice a gentle purr behind her, "no, you aren't hurting me. Certainly not right now. That much caffeine should block my receptors for the next twelve hours or so; I'm fairly…I believe the term is 'blissed-out,' right now."

"But Minion said—"

He snorts, then presses his lips briefly to the back of her head. "My dear Miss Ritchi," he says, "I can guess what Minion said. He forgets I'm not half as fragile as he thinks I am, and he's been twice as protective of me since Titan happened."

She shifts a little, yawns. She missed this while she was away—Megamind's arms around her, Megamind's voice humming low in her ear. "Still. I've never seen you rant like that before, not about anything like that."

"I know." He's quiet for a minute, and when he speaks again, Roxanna almost has to strain to hear him. "It's…going to take me some time to get used to all this. I know we haven't been together very long, and at the risk of sounding too serious…I worry."

It's easier to talk to him in the dark, when she can't see his face. It seems to be the same for him—in the darkness, they're both only voices. "What are you worried about?"

"I'm not human."

"Megamind—"

His arms tighten very slightly. "Just listen. I worry that one day I'll…say something wrong. More wrong than usual. Or, or I'll do something so completely bizarre that it wakes you up to the fact that you are dating someone who isn't even your species. If you suddenly turn around and realize I'm _fucking blue_, with an ego the size of Brooklyn and a head-to-body ratio similar to that of a _Lego toy_—"

Roxanne snorts.

"I'm _serious_," Megamind exclaims. "I've done the calculations. The proportions are almost identical."

"No, no, the part about your ego," she tells him. "It's a lot bigger than Brooklyn."

"We can't even go out in public together!" he snaps, and that's when she realizes just how serious he really is. "You don't deserve that," he says, more quietly. "You deserve to be with someone who can at least go _out_ with you without wearing a disguise."

"And you _don't_ deserve that?"

"No." It's his initial response, knee-jerk reaction, and it makes Roxanne twist away from him and sit bolt upright in bed.

"_No?_" she repeats, incredulous, staring down at him. "Excuse me. _No?_"

He sits up as well, defensive now and tired, but his receptors are out cold and he can think clearly for once. "Yes, _no_. For evil's sake, Roxanne, I don't deserve _any of this_. People have _died_ because of me—despite my best efforts—and the casualties aren't going to stop now I've switched sides. What happens when another villain shows up?" He spreads his hands helplessly. "I don't have super-speed or strength, or hearing, or laser vision. All I have is a head that's too big for my body and a brain to match!"

Roxanne takes his hands in hers and squeezes them. "_And a brain to match_," she echoes. "And that brain can out-think any human on Earth sixteen times over. You're more than a match for any villain. You were more than a match for all the heroes who came after you, remember? All except Metro Man."

Megamind does smile a little at that. "Yes. Well. We just knew each other too well." He sobers. "But Titan was a challenge, much more of a challenge than I would have liked. We only barely beat him, you know that. We got lucky."

"Every confrontation is going to carry an element of danger," Roxanne agrees. "Otherwise they wouldn't be confrontations. It'll be difficult, but life hasn't exactly been easy for either of us. We're used to difficulty, right?" She smiles, cups his cheek in her hand, and he leans into the touch almost without meaning to. "You'll be fine. And remember, you don't actually _know_ if there will be any villains to fight. Sure, you defeated Titan, but that doesn't automatically label you Metro City's new hero. Who knows? Once the rebuild project is over, maybe people will finally just leave you alone."

His heart clenches. "That would be nice," he says quietly. But how else is he supposed to fix everything? He _has_ to pick a side, has to find some purpose. If no villains turn up, what else is he supposed to do?

Megamind had been Metro City's resident villain, and Metro Man had been the resident hero. Is there any other way? Will transient villains turn up, and then leave once he defeats them? And what on earth is he supposed to do in the meantime?

Roxanne is quiet while he spins through the questions, but when she lies down and pulls Megamind's arms closed around her, he's left with more questions than when he started and too few answers.

But he's exhausted despite the caffeine in his system, and Roxanne's breathing and heartbeat are slow and even, and he's warm and comfortable. He finally sighs and lets his eyes fall closed and follows her down into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I just say, it is SO NICE to know where I'm going with all this, holy crap. When I wrote this story originally, I had no idea where any of it was going. I can flesh out Minion a little more, foreshadow some stuff...it's nice!


	4. Chapter 4

When Megamind wakes up again, he's alone. He dresses in silence, deep in thought, before going down the hall to the kitchen. Faint voices trail up from Main Storage, the catch-all room where he keeps his prototypes and rejects and any drafting equipment he isn't using—Roxanne and Minion are there, but they don't sound worried or upset. Megamind sees no reason to disturb them. He has a lot on his mind.

He looks at the coffeepot. It's full. It's always full, these days.

Megamind reaches instead for the orange juice and the bottle of pills sitting by the sink. He swallows one and pockets another for later. The pills are not timed-release the way he wishes they could be, but caffeine can't be so hard to synthesize, can it? He can't believe he didn't think of this before. This is an option, now. He can refine the formula, the dosage, set it in a protein matrix for delayed release to suit his needs…

If he can find the time, that is. Ugh.

There's so much he doesn't know about how his species works. Minion is older than he is, but not by much, and he hasn't been able to supplement Megamind's knowledge as well as either of them would like. At this point, surprises are infrequent, but…

_I should probably warn Roxanne_, he thinks. There's a decent chance he'll tell her something that ends up being completely false. He sighs, leans against the sink and stares down into the orange-yellow liquid in his glass.

Relationships are _complicated_.

There's a clunk, a crash, and bright laughter from down the hall, and Megamind smiles a little. Then he hears footsteps coming closer, and his smile fades.

He's out the kitchen door almost before he knows what he's doing. All he knows is he doesn't want to see anyone. Not Roxanne, not even Minion, not right now. Not in this mood. Ordinarily he wouldn't want to be parted from either of them, but—space, he needs space. He just—he just needs space. Just for now.

Space, and someone to talk to who _isn't_ Roxanne or Minion or some nameless asshole in a suit and tie. He thinks of Mitch and Guduza, who put in most of the work of raising him, and his other uncles, and the warden, who was somewhat of a distant father figure to Megamind growing up, but would any of them want to see him right now? After Metro Man? And Titan? And now he's working on the daylight side of things, at least ostensibly, and—they might not want to see him. Not anymore.

(Mitch, letting Megamind color in his tattoos with Sebestyen's markers before he could walk, back when he was still Little Blue; Guduza, reading quietly beside him before he could talk, letting him turn the pages of Derrida and Boudrillard; Mitch, walking in slow circles and bouncing him as he cried; Guduza, lying in bed with Minion tucked under his arm and Megamind falling asleep on his chest. Mitch and Niko, squaring off against the Aryans in Mess with eleven-year-old Blue tucked behind them; Guduza, praying over him in the infirmary when he was fifteen. Megamind gulps hard.)

(They might not want to see him. It's an unexpectedly painful thought.)

These moods are some of the few times Megamind is able to acknowledge how much he wishes he had someone else around. Friends. Ordinarily, he's fine with the usual solitude—he's a solitary creature anyway, and Minion is a wonderful companion, everything he needs—but sometimes Megamind isn't sure if he prefers solitude because he actually enjoys it or because he's just used to it. Other than Minion, he doesn't have anyone he can rely on.

Well. Not _really_. Not in the conventional sense. But…there is his old enemy, who's…sort of a friend, if only because of everything they've put each other through, over the years.

Megamind pauses. Considers this as best he can with his head spinning the way it is. It rankles, but as much as he hates the thought of asking Wayne for—oh, not _help_, he'd never ask Wayne for help—_input_—he's the only living person Megamind can really stomach the thought of seeing, right now. He knows Wayne _will_ help, if only because he owes Megamind for leaving him to handle Titan on his own.

He smiles thinly and twists his watch, then heads for the bay bridge. He'll walk. It's only a few miles and still early in the afternoon, and the sun is hidden behind a screen of heavy, dark clouds, so the breeze is cool on his skin. The air smells like lightning.

* * *

The heavy door is, again, unlocked, but Megamind knocks a few times anyway before he pushes it open. Knocking is a new thing for him, but he figures it's best to at least try to be polite. He enters somewhat hesitantly—now that he knows Metro Man might actually be here, he's reluctant to startle him. "Ol…_he_llo?" He pauses. "Are you home?"

There's no answer. Because of course there isn't, because the universe hates him. So he claims the white armchair across from Wayne's couch, puts his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, closes his eyes. Waits.

He knows he probably ought to let the whole idea go, but he just can't seem to drop it. He's tried. He has _been _trying, and trying and trying and trying every way he can think of, and it hasn't _worked_—and in his experience, that's a sign something is still wrong. Megamind even knows what it is, this time.

He knows what's wrong, and he knows what he has to do about it. He just…

But there's really nothing else he can do. He's decided. This is the only idea he's had that offered any relief at all. It's just going to kill him to do it, figuratively speaking. And now he's decided, and he _still_ can't let it go, so—sooner rather than later.

Megamind is pretty sure he knows himself reasonably well. He knows he's obsessive, he knows he has a critically low sense of self-worth. He knows he's hypervigilant and mistrustful and desperately anxious in new situations and around new people. He knows he's hyperactive and impatient. He knows he's egotistical.

(The size of his ego isn't actually that surprising even with his low self-worth. He knows how smart he actually is, and he is also aware that he is very, _very_ good at what he does when he puts his mind to it. Most of his insecurities center around socializing, and what sort of image he has in the eyes of the public. Presentation.)

But knowing who he is, even knowing _why _he is the way he is and _why _he thinks the way he does, doesn't help lay his fears to rest. They are. Reasonable fears to have.

He tells himself, _very firmly_, yet again, that the problem is with his new career path, and what it will mean for him and Roxanne. Her suggestion to simply wait and see what happens was unrealistic; Megamind knows the score. He made a whole new name for himself by defeating Titan. Bad guys are definitely going to come sniffing—maybe there won't be any real villains right away, but the city's criminals are going to start pushing their limits fairly soon, seeing just how much more they can get away with now their Overlord is busy with new pursuits. After all Megamind has done to Metro City over the years, he's…finding himself feeling increasingly guilty about wishing he could just leave the people on their own.

Granted, he has worked _for _Metro City, too, in his way. Over the years. Quietly. But rarely in any direct way, and never on the daylight side of things.

He has to make things right. He has to try—he may not be able to do anything right, but he has to at least _try_. And there's so much he could do that he's never bothered attempting before! The harbor filter is just the beginning. He can optimize the recycling center's capabilities, talk to the zoning board about another center on the opposite end of town, talk to the city planning commission about green rooftop initiatives, _and_ he has ideas for both moss- and algae-based clean air solutions. Urban photobioreactors, wastewater and runoff purification. _Potentially_, external fortifications for the city itself, but Megamind has a feeling that might just be his personal territoriality coming into play.

He'll have to work on those in as much of his own time as he can find, either way. He knows for a fact he'll never get that last one approved by any human commission.

Publicly, he's working on figuring out a budget restructure for better community aid programs. The fewer people who feel locked into turning to illegal pursuits, the better off everyone will be. He's also outlined and proposed three new training programs for the Metro Police Academy, with mandatory continuing education sessions twice annually. And he's been receiving a surprising amount of pushback about making officer complaint forms freely available in the city's public libraries, but Megamind is holding his ground on that one. Part of his public initiative is making sure his so-called first line of defense is competent, but there's a balance to be struck with the public itself in that respect, and Megamind is _good_ at balance.

(He pulls no punches when it comes to the police. The MCPD sat on their laurels for more than ten years while Metro Man handled almost everything in Metro City. Better ineffectual than overzealous, to be sure, but they're a disgrace and Megamind is going to say so. And no, he has _no_ interest in outsourcing their training to the usual private contractors, thanks ever so much for asking; contractors tend not to cover de-escalation or community relations, both of which are currently abysmal. Megamind will source his own instructors.)

(Which means interviews, and advertising, and whittling down of candidates…all of which, of course, means _time_. But, it's fine. It's for a good cause. It's fine.)

One of the first questions he received after making the announcement about mandatory continuing education was whether he would be providing weaponry as well as training. He'd laughed the representative out of the room. New weaponry is the first step towards overzealous, for one thing; for another, the federal government will be on him like stink on shit if Megamind starts handing out futuristic firearms. Doing so would mark him a credible threat instead of a potential asset, and he very much does not want to _ever _deal with the white coats in the Paranormal, Holistic, and Extraterrestrial Department again. He still has scars from last time—or he would, if he didn't heal so quickly.

But he'll offer training, because they desperately need it, and he's willing to offer funding provided he gets the final say in how the money is used.

He's—excited, actually. More excited than he has been about any recent doomsday device, though he'll never admit it. The fact of the matter is, _destroying _things takes very little finesse. Megamind has raised destruction to an art form over the years, but _making _the doomsday devices is the part he's always enjoyed the most, because of the multitudes of things that can go wrong! Using his inventions wasn't much fun until Metro Man came to stop him and added that little element of chaos.

Destruction and mayhem are simple. Child's play. But improvement? Creation? Creation is difficult, complicated. Creation can blow up in your face.

_So I'm going to fix up Metro City. And when the new villains start testing their boundaries, I'll keep them in line. It's a lot of work, and none of it is easy, but at least it isn't heroing. It's just…looking after what's mine. Right?_

_Somebody has to do it._

A voice, somewhere behind him. "Somebody has to do what?"

Megamind jumps and yells, then twists around in his seat and glares up at Wayne, who's lounging against the doorframe with an amused expression on his face.

"Don't sneak up on me!"

Wayne grins, winks, aims a finger at him. "Thinking aloud, little buddy."

Megamind slides his face back into his hands as Wayne drifts over to sprawl on the couch across from him.

"Urgh," he says, and leaves it there.

Wayne studies the set of his former enemy's shoulders. He's made it a point to learn Megamind's buttons and how to push them and how to tell exactly how close the little guy is to snapping, and right now Megamind isn't even bothering to try to hide how tightly he's wound.

He decides to keep his tone brusque. "So! What's eating you?"

"Um." Megamind scrubs his shaky hands down over his face and lets them drop into his lap as he sits up. "So…Roxanne and I are a thing, now."

Wayne raises his eyebrows. "There's nothing on the news," he says. He doesn't watch the news very often—for the same reason his fortress is soundproofed—but still, something like this? Surely he would have heard _something_.

"We're…keeping it private. It would look bad," Megamind clarifies when Wayne just looks puzzled.

"Ah." Wayne nods. "Smart."

Megamind snorts. "Head's big for a reason." Then his gaze sharpens. "Don't tell anyone."

Wayne forces a laugh, waves an arm around at the empty hideout before dropping it back along the back of the couch. "Look around you, Blue," he says. "Who am I gonna tell?"

"Even if you could, would you?"

Wayne blinks, then focuses. Megamind's narrow features are arranged into an odd blend of wariness and defiance, which is…unexpected. He tends to play his hand pretty close to the vest, emotionally speaking, at least when Wayne is around. Wayne has seen his walls go down a couple of times before, but years ago, back before they were teenagers, before Megamind learned how to hide. But his walls are down now, as much as they can ever _be _down, and…

Why is Megamind is talking to him instead of that fish of his, if something's wrong? If Megamind is here, talking to him, something must be exceptionally wrong.

"Don't worry." Wayne shakes his head, opting to see where this is going. "I won't say anything."

Megamind nods a few times, then bites his lip and goes quiet, but he'll talk when he can bring himself to, Wayne knows. For now, Wayne just sits and waits, drawing on his years of experience with projecting an aura of placid calm. He's lighthearted, he's approachable. Totally nonthreatening. Lord knows if Megamind will buy it, given their history, but—

Oh he apparently does. "There are going to be villains. Right?" Megamind says, an odd kind of urgency in his face. "_You _know that. I mean, I'll _do_ it, I'm going to defend this city if it's the last thing I ever do. This is my home. But…I. Roxanne. I can't…"

"You don't want to put her in danger?"

"I _can't _put her in danger." Megamind shakes his head wildly. "If she gets hurt—because of me—I couldn't stand it, I couldn't _stand _it." A disgusted expression flashes over his features, very briefly, and he glares angrily at nothing. "So what do I _do?_"

"You're asking me?"

"I'm asking you."

Wayne exhales slowly. He's…lucky, sort of, that he had never needed to worry about this particular issue. The little guy seems really bothered, which is…hmm. "You protect her, I guess," he says, "as much as you can." _Even though she certainly doesn't need it_, he adds silently. _And you know that, so what is this about, really?_

"Yes I _know that_," Megamind snaps, and Wayne remembers, too late, that he hates it when people state the obvious. "But how am I supposed to _do_ it? Have you forgotten I am _completely incompetent?_" His voice at the end is almost a snarl, but he composes himself almost immediately, sitting up straight and tucking his elbows close against his sides, knees together, hands curled around each other in his lap. He glares at Wayne, his expression almost haughty.

_Ohhh this is bad_, Wayne thinks. Megamind only makes himself small like that when he's seriously keyed-up about something.

"Look, little buddy," he says carefully. "You've only ever _really _fought me, and I'm…kind of an outlier in terms of raw power. Other opponents probably won't have as many special abilities you'll need to worry about. You'll be fine!"

Megamind looks away, shakes his head but doesn't actually deny it. Interesting.

_You've already thought of that, haven't you?_ Wayne does his best not to give away what he's thinking, but really, what is Megamind doing here? Wayne _knows _him, and something is very wrong with this picture. For all Megamind's frequent social gaffs, he's surprisingly skilled at predicting other people's behavior, and he knows Wayne exceptionally well. _He'll have already thought of everything I'm likely to say, so what is he…_

And then it clicks.

Megamind isn't here because he can't figure out what to do; he's here because he's already decided. But if whatever he's going to do is so bad that he's pretending to seek advice, then…oh.

_Ohhh. Oh, no_.

"You're going to leave her," Wayne says disbelievingly, and Megamind blinks, then sets his jaw.

"It's the only way she'll be safe."

"'For her own good,' is that it?" Wayne shakes his head again, staring at the determined blue face across from him. "She'll hate you for that, Blue. Making decisions for her—she _hates _that. Can't say I blame her."

Megamind nods. "Yes," he says, and smiles for the first time. "I know. That's the whole point."

Wayne wants to hit him. "That's the _point?_"

Megamind spreads his hands. He looks almost excited—like he's revealing his latest Dastardly Plan—but there's pain behind his eyes and hovering around the corners of his mouth, and his knees are still clamped together in front of him and his spine is still ramrod straight. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend!" he exclaims. "If _she's _my enemy and _they're _my enemies, they won't touch her!"

His eyes are shining. "Don't you get it, don't you _see?_" He lets out a sharp little laugh. "That's the fallback! Make her leave, and then when she figures it out—because she will, you _know _she will," and Wayne has to admit, he's probably right about that, "she'll guess my motivation. I've already laid the psychological groundwork. And she'll _hate _me!" He sounds delighted, and he looks like he's about to cry. "It'll work. I _know _it'll work. I just, I have to do this now, before she breaks up with me. This has to be the reason she leaves. Because even if I do it after, they'll still go after her on the off chance that I still have feelings for her."

Wayne frowns a little. Okay, the last part of that makes next to no sense at all—Megamind is going to have feelings for Roxanne regardless of what she thinks of him—but one sentence in particular catches his attention. _I have to do this now, before she breaks up with me_.

Ah. Aha. Megamind is talking like the breakup is already a given. As if all of this is to just head off a problem before it even becomes a problem.

He almost laughs, but he knows that would be a bad idea. _You little coward_, he thinks. Megamind's isn't doing this to protect Roxanne. Her safety might be a nice bonus, but he wouldn't have come to Wayne if this was just about her; he would have just done it and devil take the consequences. Besides, he _knows _Roxanne is more than capable of taking care of herself when it comes to dealing with villains.

Wayne relaxes a little. This whole encounter has had him on edge; it's been so surreal—like his old nemesis has been trying to convince him that his reasons are valid. He sounded like a villain revealing his plot, but villains only try to justify their actions at the final confrontation. Build the machine, _then _think of a reason.

No, he came to Wayne to look for an excuse. He can't or won't believe Roxanne wants him, so he's going to preemptively sabotage everything.

But—_come on!_ Seriously? He's a genius! He _must _know that's stupid. He must, or he wouldn't have come here. _Can't or won't believe that, either, huh? You need someone else to confirm it for you_.

Of course, Wayne could be wrong. Time to test the hypothesis. "That makes sense," he says, and nods slowly.

Megamind blinks. "Of—of course it does."

"Besides," he continues, paying close attention to the emotions flashing across Megamind's face as he speaks, listening carefully to the tension crawling up his spine, "it isn't like she'll want to be with you forever either way. This'll keep her safe and save you both a lot of heartache in the long run."

Megamind pulls back, looking a little bit like he's been kicked in the stomach, and then poorly-concealed relief spreads over his features. _Hah_, Wayne thinks. _I was right_. He's just given the go-ahead for this plan.

_Oh, Blue, you are an idiot_. But at least he knows it. At least he knows, deep down, that this is stupid. That's something.

Megamind is still blinking. For all his brilliance, he's fairly easy to read as long as his guard is down. "Exactly," he says weakly. "That's…that's exactly it. I mean. Why would she pick me?"

Wayne shrugs. If there's a way to convince the little guy, he doesn't know what it is. It would all be talk, anyway, and he knows how cheap talk is. Megamind, particularly, knows how cheap talk is and how fragile promises are.

Megamind gets to his feet, fidgeting nervously, his elbows against his sides. "Okay. I…thank you. For your honesty. I was never here."

Wayne shrugs again. "Hey, anytime," he says. "No problem. Glad I could help," and watches his former enemy until the door clicks softly shut behind him.

And then he dives for his phone.

* * *

"And this one?" Roxanne points at a pair of black ski boots with what look like small rockets mounted on the soles. They're polished, and they have their own shelf away from the other unused inventions. "What were these supposed to be?"

Minion grimaces. "Those were a nightmare," he says. "They're jet-boots. They're fully functional, they just don't work quite as well as he expected them to. We don't use them."

Roxanne grins. "What, did he forget to include a brake in these, too?"

"You laugh," he says seriously, "but those are probably his biggest overall failure to date. He underestimated both the rigidity of the boot _and _the acceleration sensitivity on his first test run."

She looks at the boots and thinks for a minute. "So…it went too fast, too hard?"

Minion lifts one of the boots down from the shelf and holds it out to her. "Careful," he warns as she reaches for it. "It's heavy."

"I think I can handle it." She's surprised, though, at just how heavy it actually is. She quickly lowers it to the floor, only barely avoiding dropping it, then looks up to see Minion trying not to laugh at her.

"Thirty-two kilos," he tells her in answer to her unspoken question. "Just a little bit over seventy pounds."

Roxanne frowns down at the boot. "So, he put them on and hit the gas, and…?"

"If his connective tissues weren't as strong and as elastic as they are, or if he was just a little more enthusiastic about the trial run," Minion says, "these things probably would have torn his legs off."

Roxanne's head snaps up and she stares. "Are you serious?"

He nods. "Oh, absolutely." He slides a hand through the air and makes a _schkkkkk _noise. Roxanne winces. "Just like that. Luckily he included a failsafe—they automatically shut off as soon as he was no longer vertical, so almost immediately. He was hurt pretty badly, but he recovered."

Roxanne looks down at the boot. She isn't about to try to pick it up again. "How badly?"

Minion purses his lips. "He hyperextended both knees, cracked one of his kneecaps, and tore both hips out of their sockets. Various muscle and ligament problems, and don't get me started on what it did to his joints. All in all, these death traps kept him out of commission for nearly a month. Two, if you count the neck and spinal injuries; those persisted for a while." He thinks for a moment. "He might still have scars on the backs of his legs—he doesn't usually scar, but it does happen occasionally. Burns, particularly uneven cuts, that sort of thing."

"When was all this?"

"Oh, years ago, Miss Ritchi. Back when we were just starting out." Minion replaces the boot on its shelf. He doesn't seem to even notice the weight, and Roxanne has to wonder just how strong his gorilla suit actually is. "I was all for destroying the things, but he insisted we keep them around as a reminder of what can happen if we aren't careful."

_No wonder he's so detail-oriented_. Roxanne shakes her head. Most of the old instruments and discarded ideas and prototypes Minion has shown her over the past few hours have been interesting or useful to varying degrees, and some of them (like the battle sporks) have been downright comical. But those boots are really dangerous. Well, most of Megamind's old inventions are dangerous, but none of the others ever went so horribly wrong.

Then again, if he hadn't known how to use what he made…

"Wow."

They hear the slam of a faraway door, then the unmistakable sound of hard-soled boots clop-clopping across cement floors. "Minion," Megamind calls. "Minion, did you move the three-dimensional projectors? I looked in the ceiling mounts, but—" He stops dead when he sees Roxanne. "Oh. Ollo. What are you…?"

His eyes move past her to the black boots on the wall and he gasps. "Minion! Don't show her _that!_" He almost leaps forward, one long hand locking around Roxanne's arm like a vise as if to pull her away. "You shouldn't—why would you—"

"I—I just asked him to show me around outside of Main Storage a bit," Roxanne says hastily, her heart racing. His sudden lunge caught her by a little too much surprise. "You've got so much stuff back here, some of it's really cool."

"Yes, it is _all _cool, thank you. But these are _mine_." He looks so patently indignant that Roxanne can't help but laugh a little and relax. "It's _private_," Megamind insists.

"Okay, okay," Roxanne says, then winces. "Um. Ow?"

He looks down, then snaps his hand away from her arm like he's burned her. "OhnoI'msosorry."

She's still kind of laughing. "It's okay, I know you didn't mean it. What's a three-dimensional projector?" Getting Megamind to talk about his inventions, letting him show off a bit—that tends to be the easiest way to calm him down. "Can I help with it?"

"It's like a holo—" Minion begins, but Megamind cuts him off.

"Actually," he says, "I think—I think I'd like to be left alone for a little while." When Roxanne blinks, he adds, "If that's okay. Is that okay?"

"It's absolutely okay," she tells him. He's never asked her to leave him alone before, but of course it's fine. "I actually need to get home for a bit and do some laundry and pick up some groceries. Should I come back tonight, tomorrow…?"

Megamind hesitates. "Tomorrow would probably be better," he says slowly, and Roxanne nods.

"Okay. I guess I'll see you tomorrow after work, then." She opens her arms, asking for a hug—sometimes he doesn't want to be touched, and she isn't sure if this is one of those times—but he surprises her with a quick kiss, then ducks away before she can touch him, walking quickly over to his drafting table.

Roxanne glances up at Minion, questioning, but he looks just as confused as she feels, so she just gives him a quick hug and a wave as she escapes.

Minion waves, watches her leave. Then he turns towards Megamind.

"Please, Minion," Megamind says quietly, without looking up, and after a minute, Minion clanks away.

And Megamind bends over his table. He shouldn't have kissed her, he knows it was stupid, but he just couldn't help himself. That was probably the last chance he'll ever have.

He's doing the right thing. She had released actual _fear_—however brief—when he panicked and grabbed her, not that he can blame her. So. This is the right thing to do. He focuses on the smell of the fear she'd tried to hide from him, an ugly tang in the back of his throat.

What he has in mind is incredibly easy. He already has all the equipment—really, all he has to do is program it to answer his cues instead of play pre-recorded video. Megamind is sure he can be a puppetmaster—he's less certain if he could actually, physically involve himself with someone other than Roxanne, even if only for a few seconds.

So he'll use a combination of stock footage and overlays to pull this off. It won't be too hard. It'll be easy. And it won't hurt a bit.

_And Roxanne needs me to protect her. Yeah, right_.

Megamind has never been good at lying to himself.

* * *

_It's almost done. The calculations are finished, the board is set. Today, maybe, or tomorrow. He can wait. Maybe he'll go out to dinner tonight, splurge a little, before the world knows his name._

_He nods to himself, smiling at his machine._

_He's waited this long for recognition. He can be patient. He can wait a little longer._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> megamind i love you but this is not good, you are self-destructing in a major way, please talk to someone


	5. Chapter 5

Work isn't awful, but it is still work, and by the time Roxanne finally presses 'send' on the last email she wants to get done, it's already six o'clock. _Crap_.

She pulls out her cell phone to text Megamind, to see if he wants her to bring dinner to the Lair or if Minion already has plans. He's been oddly quiet, today. Usually, the two of them send sporadic texts back and forth all day, but the film guys have kept Roxanne hopping about the footage she brought in, so she hasn't really had a chance to look at her cell very much. She would have, if it had blooped at her, but it never did.

When she opens it to check for missed messages, she sees why. The screen is dark.

Roxanne frowns. She rarely turns her phone off…oh, huh. The battery is dead; that's weird. Maybe she left the screen on all day by accident? It should still have some charge, though…

Oh, well. She'll just ask what he wants to do when she gets to Evil Lair, she decides. She hails a taxi at random instead of calling Akos, since his number is in her dead phone.

The driver who lets her out near the Lair looks at her dubiously, but doesn't say anything about the abandoned piers or the warehouses in the distribution district possibly being dangerous—minus two points, in Roxanne's mind. But the cab doesn't pull away, either, and Roxanne can see the driver is watching her, and that's plus five points.

"Hello," she calls as she enters the Lair. "Anyone home?" _He's probably too focused on drafting something_, she thinks, and grins when she sees the light shining out from under the heavy curtain that separates his work station from the rest of the main room. The long curtain is closed, which is unusual, but Roxanne figures Megamind has his reasons and she isn't shy about pulling it open.

What she sees makes her stop dead in her tracks.

Megamind's 'reasons' for having the curtain closed has red hair, freckles, and her hands _all over_ Megamind.

Roxanne's thought processes slam to a halt. _Not possible_, she thinks, but it has to be; she can _see it_. What's more, Roxanne is good at distinguishing genuine reactions from fake ones—she's a reporter; she knows when someone is wearing a real smile, and she knows Megamind himself well enough to see how genuinely enthusiastic he is about the current proceedings.

"_What the fuck_," she says, but that's as far as she gets before her anger rises up and chokes her. The redhead and Megamind scramble guiltily apart. Megamind opens his mouth to say something, but Roxanne isn't interested.

"No," she snarls. "No, whatever you're about to say, save it." She turns on her heel and stalks towards the door.

Megamind's voice sounds strangely distant behind her. "But—"

"_Shut it_, Megs. Go find someone who loves you."

If she had looked back before storming out, she might have seen Megamind and the other woman flicker and vanish into thin air. If she had gone deeper into the Lair, she would have seen the _real _Megamind slump over his controls, staring straight ahead. And if she'd hidden in the deep shadows by the door, she might have heard him say, "Well, the three-dimensional projectors are back online," before burying his face in his hands.

Unfortunately, Roxanne does none of these things. She doesn't even look back after she gets outside. White-faced and trembling, she slams back into the miraculously still-waiting taxi, startling the driver, who was checking her cell phone.

"Drive," Roxanne snaps, unable to feel bad about startling her.

The driver looks at her. Most of her fares don't sit in the front passenger seat, but she isn't about to tell Roxanne to move, not when she's looking like _that_. "Where to?"

"I don't care," Roxanne hisses, turning to look out the window. "I don't care, I don't care, I don't _care_, just take me somewhere that isn't here and take me there _now_. Take me _home_. 600 River Street."

"Yes ma'am." And the driver pulls away from the curb with enough unsettled vigor that she leaves two black stripes on the pavement.

The screeching tires fit Roxanne's mood perfectly. _What on god's green earth…?_

A few seconds later, the older woman clears her throat. "So. You…wanna talk about it?"

"_No_," Roxanne snaps, glaring out at the harbor without seeing anything, but she continues without thinking anyway. "I just walked in on my boyfriend making out with some—floozy."

The driver nods encouragingly.

"And I'm just _surprised_, is all, because he _really _isn't the type."

The driver grimaces, still nodding. "You know, that's what I thought about my ex-husband."

Roxanne glances at her, then away, and lets out a long, shuddering breath. "Yeah, I guess…I mean, I guess this sort of thing isn't really that unusual. I just…"

"Never thought it'd happen to you?"

Roxanne forces a laugh and shakes her head. "Not with him, at least. He's…" She trails off, but all she can say is, "really not the type," again.

"Yeah?" The other woman looks at her. "What type is he?"

"The blue type," Roxanne mutters.

"What?"

"Never mind. Just." She shakes her head and shuts her eyes. "You know what, just let me out here. I'll walk home."

The driver runs a stale yellow light. "No way, not in this part of town. I'm taking you back to your place. And then you are going to sit tight and think until you're thinking clearly. I've been where you are, trust me."

Roxanne doesn't want to think; she wants to go tearing back to the Lair and grab Megamind by the throat and shake him. He _knew _she would be coming by! If he had another girlfriend, why the _hell _wouldn't he make her leave? Why even bring her over today in the first place?

The question brings her up short.

_Why, indeed._ Roxanne is pretty sure "getting caught cheating" would be grounds for having a Mastermind License revoked, if such a thing existed. Besides, if anybody could hide an affair, it was Megamind. He wouldn't miss a thing. Granted, he's a terrible liar, but he wouldn't have to lie because he wouldn't get caught. He simply _wouldn't_. And he may have been an Evil Overlord once upon a time, but he's always had scruples. He's always been respectful, always played by his gentleman's rules.

And where would he even _get _another girlfriend? Roxanne has been wrong about people before, but Megamind is pretty obvious about how asocial he is—or so she had thought. She has never considered this particular possibility before, but _if _she had, she would have _thought _the guilt of hiding something like that would make him implode. And it might be uncharitable, but Roxanne honestly would have thought Megamind didn't have the guts to cheat on her.

This is…she knows what she saw, but what she saw was so out of character for him that it borders on worrisome, honestly. The more Roxanne thinks about it, the more she just doesn't buy it. Something else must be going on. It must. Something she doesn't know about or accidentally overlooked or…

_The casualties aren't going to just stop now that I've switched sides. What happens when another villain shows up?_

_Minion, did you move the three-dimensional projectors?_

Roxanne blinks, dumbfounded. "You've gotta be kidding me," she mutters, and a weird sort of calm settles over her. She should have realized, should have heard what he wasn't saying, but she really hadn't figured Megamind for the sort of guy who'd pull the I'm-doing-it-to-protect-you card. "God_damn_ it."

On one hand, she's relieved to know he probably isn't actually cheating on her. On the other hand…

Never mind what's on the other hand. The other hand is balled into a fist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh megamind oh nooooooo
> 
> (i.hate.these.decisions.)


	6. Chapter 6

The calm wears off sometime in the seconds between the taxi pulling away and Roxanne walking into her building, because Carlos looks kind of red and hazy around the edges. By the time she reaches her apartment, she's worked herself into a category-five rage.

She storms through her door and slams it behind her, hurls her purse at the sofa. It lands with a disappointingly soft _pluth_.

There are. No. _Words_.

If there's one thing Roxanne _cannot _stand, it's people who make decisions for other people. Particularly when those other people are their significant others, their _partners_, who are supposed to be part of a _team_. _Especially _particularly without even talking about it first. _It's demeaning, and rude, and inconsiderate, and_—

—_and I've _had enough _of people thinking I need protecting!_

She lets out a strangled scream of frustration, hoping it will make her feel better. It only makes her feel silly. Fuming, she plugs in her phone, turns it on.

Is there any possible way she could have misread the signs? Any possible way she misread what was happening? God, this can't be happening; please let something else be happening, here. Maybe—maybe she's jumping to conclusions? Could that be it? She knows she tends to do that more when she's stressed, and that stupid documentary has definitely had her stressed out, so—well, but what else could it be? But—it's just—

She had thought Megamind had more respect for her than this. She had _hoped_ he had more respect for her than this.

Her phone rings, and Roxanne picks up without thinking. A distraction, yes, please, anything.

"Annie, hello! How was your trip? I wanted to give you a day or so to settle back in before I called, but your phone was turned off at lunchtime, so I thought I'd try you again after you got home from work. Is now a good time? Are you in the middle of something?"

Anything but that.

"…Hi, Mom." She turns and sinks onto the sofa, only to leap up again with her teeth bared and snatch blindly for the purse she has just sat on. She stops herself just short of flinging it at the wall, telling herself it would accomplish nothing, and takes a long, deep breath through her nose instead. "The trip was…the trip was good! No, I'm not doing anything. I'm…still really tired." She sits back down, and her purse slides through her fingers, forgotten. "Made the mistake of taking a nap when I got back."

There's a short pause. Then, "What's wrong?"

"What? Nothing's wrong."

Linda Ritchi laughs. "I'm your mother, I can tell when something's wrong. What is it? Can I help?"

Somehow, Megamind has managed to render Roxanne nearly hysterical twice in as many months. She has to try hard not to burst out laughing at her mother's offer. She can either laugh or cry, and she much prefers the former.

"I…I very much doubt it, Mom. But thanks."

"Change of subject?"

This time Roxanne does laugh, a little. "Please."

"How did you like getting away from the city for a change? Was it nice?"

Roxanne can picture her mother, sitting at her house in California with a jar of nail polish in one hand and a pen in the other, grey hair pulled back in a ponytail. Her book of crossword puzzles is probably still lying on the arm of her chair, and there are probably at least three more similar books within a ten-foot radius. The sliding doors to the patio will be open, and all unnecessary lights turned off.

Things at home would be blissfully normal.

She bites her lip hard. Metro City is home to her and always has been, and she knows that, but moving back and forth between the two cities when she was a child has left Roxanne with a less-than-healthy residual sense of home-is-where-I'm-_not_, especially when times are tough. And right now, she just wants to go home.

And she wants a hug. Let it never be said that Roxanne Ritchi can't tough it out on her own, but sometimes even she needs a hug.

"It was really great. Amsterdam was _beautiful_. And before you ask, yes, I brought back cheese, it's in my fridge, I'm mailing it to you soon. I just need to get dry ice." She rolls her eyes at her mother's happy exclamations, and tries not to remember that the cheese is, in fact, still wrapped in a bag in _Megamind's _fridge.

They chat about nothing in general for a while, and Roxanne does her best to listen to her mother reminisce about the times she's gone abroad. But her mind is elsewhere.

Finally she can't stand it; she has to ask. "Mom, I've got a hypothetical question for you. Well. Not hypothetical." Because, in Roxanne's experience and probably her mother's as well, these sorts of hypothetical questions are never hypothetical. "One of my friends is going through a rough patch with her guy-friend, and I…can I run some stuff by you?"

"Oh? Of course, go ahead."

Roxanne swallows. "So, he seems like a really great guy, but he…has some skeletons in his closet. Maybe he's pissed off some important people, maybe he's worried some powerful people are going to come looking for a fight." Metro City has a vast and highly-organized criminal underworld; Linda knows that, so hopefully she won't ask any awkward questions. "I've met the guy, I can vouch for his character. But he…he left my friend even though things were going really well, and…well, he said some stuff before he left that has us thinking it's because he wanted to keep her safe." At this point, it's fairly obvious to Roxanne that she wouldn't have seen anything if Megamind didn't _want _her to see it. "Is there…any other reason he might have done it? At all?" She swallows. "Did any of your couples ever run into anything like this?"

"Hm. Do you know his romantic history?"

"I'm pretty sure this is his first actual romantic relationship. If not, it's the first one in…a long time."

"And tell me about his family? Do you know anything about them?" Linda's forty years as a couple's counselor are kicking in.

"I know he's an orphan. Foster care…didn't work out." Understatement of the century: he was raised in a prison. "I don't know if he ever really had anything you'd call a family."

"So he has nobody?"

Roxanne hesitates. How to describe Minion? "We-ell," she says slowly, drawing it out. "He has _a_ friend. They've known each other pretty much forever. It's kind of a…Batman and Alfred situation? Kind of? Except they're…mostly the same age." Minion is much more best friend than butler, but the analogy _almost _works. She grimaces.

"This Alfred, is he…do you know what kind of influence he has? What's his function in this guy's life?"

"Not really," Roxanne admits. "His role is…damage control. Sort of." That's probably the most boiled-down explanation of Minion she can give.

"But he's not trying to pull Bruce back into their old lifestyle?"

"Oh, no," Roxanne quickly assures her, grinning a little in spite of herself at the way her mother is just rolling with the Batman thing. "No, nothing like that."

"Well, that's one good thing," her mother murmurs. "Okay, and—mental health? Do you know anything, there?"

"…Not really," Roxanne says slowly, turning this over in her mind. "He can be…impulsive? He has…highs and lows, I guess, but…I don't know if they're to the extent they'd qualify as a mental health issue." But then, she might not know that, yet, she realizes. She's been familiar with Megamind for years, but she's only really come to know him recently, and they're very much still learning about each other.

"Okay," Linda says again. "Not a whole lot to go on, but that's not surprising. Let me think. Who's the friend?"

Roxanne fumbles. "It…oh, it's Jo." _Sorry, Jo_, she thinks guiltily, but she knows Jo will cover for her if she has to.

There's another short pause, and then Linda sighs. "Well, if it's Jo, I'd say she's well rid of this guy. Granted, I don't know either of them as well as you do, but I doubt she has the patience to deal with someone with the kind of trust issues it sounds like he'll be dealing with."

"Trust issues," Roxanne echoes, startled. She's already wondered about that—he's _Megamind_, he was a _supervillain; _how do you decide to be a supervillain if trust issues aren't part of it?—but he does seem to trust her to some extent. Or, she thought he did, at least. He has allowed himself to sleep in her home, a few times; if that isn't trust, Roxanne doesn't know what else is. "I don't know, he seemed pretty trusting to me."

"Maybe that's not the right phrase," her mother muses. "He's…I might be wrong, because he does have Alfred, but few people are totally alone in life. And you reached for _damage control_ as Alfred's main role; that's…telling."

Roxanne lets out a long breath. "So, you have seen this before, then."

"If I'm right, then yes. The core of it, anyway; it's actually not terribly uncommon," Linda tells her. "Really, Annie, it's not so different from how you felt after what's-his-name ghosted you back in high school. You remember."

She blinks. That particular boyfriend had moved to a different school district halfway through junior year, they had gone on two more dates, everything was fine, and then she never heard from him again. She'd had some trouble trusting new partners after that, for a while.

Well, that does sort of make sense, Roxanne supposes. If Megamind has had any positive human influences in his life, he doesn't have them anymore, and he doesn't talk about them. He mentions his uncles every so often, but he's never been eager to expound on any details.

"But he did this without even _talking _to her," she says. "I don't get it. He didn't say _anything_."

"Of course," Linda says, sounding surprised. "Of course he did. If he talked to her about it, she'd only talk him into staying."

Okay, that one is _definitely_ true. But at least then they could have addressed it! Maybe laid that fear to rest! That's not talking into staying; that's addressing an insecurity, that's—it's only _talking into staying_ if it's a cover for something else that doesn't get resolved—

"And he may not be ready to stay," Linda tells her. "Aged out of the system, ex-con, only one friend in the world, skeletons in his closet? Annie, he's had a rough time and he's made some bad calls. Trusting someone with your heart requires you to trust your partner _and_ yourself. Who's to say she's not another bad call? Besides," she adds, "a breakup isn't a discussion. It can be, sometimes, but…sometimes a person just needs to walk away. If he isn't ready, he isn't ready."

But Roxanne can still remember Megamind lying in the grass in the park, panicky and frightened but still _talking _to her. She remembers being surprised, and impressed with the way he was forcing himself to stay still and talk it out.

"He seemed ready, though," she murmurs. "He really did."

There's a pause. Then Linda asks, "Well, what about major life changes? Any big transitions recently? Those are stressors; they can exacerbate things."

Roxanne sits bolt upright. The career change, the meetings, the—and his contact with humans, on top of that—

"He switched jobs," she says. "A few months ago. He's…in a, um, a high-visibility management position, now. Sort of."

"At a new company? Or was he hired from within?"

"A new company. Totally new team, and he's never done this type of work before, and you should _see_ the hours he's been putting in," Roxanne says.

"Well," Linda says, "again, I don't know Bruce, but yes, that sounds to me like a recipe for a godawful mess. Trouble at work often causes trouble at home, and vice versa." She laughs a little. "That's another one I saw a lot of. If it helps, Jo is far from alone in this."

And he doesn't even think he deserves a normal relationship, Roxanne remembers from her conversation in bed with him, just yesterday. _For evil's sake, Roxanne, I don't deserve any of this!_

And in the park, last month: _Same mistake, multiple times; you're giving me a lot of the benefit of the doubt_. He should have been over the moon about a second chance; instead, he almost seemed like he was trying to convince her to leave.

"Roxanne?"

"I'm still here, Mom. Just thinking."

"Well, honey, you sound like you've got a lot on your mind. Let Jo know I'm rooting for her, okay? She's a trooper, she'll be okay."

"Will do," Roxanne says. _Hey, a whole conversation without snapping at each other, that's nice_. "Thanks for your thoughts on this." She isn't sure how much of it was truly applicable, but it all sounded plausible enough. Certainly worth thinking about.

Linda laughs again. "Oh, it's nice to dust off the old counseling skills from time to time, even if it is by proxy. And, Annie, I wanted to ask. Are _you _okay?"

Roxanne blinks, thrown. "Me?"

"It's almost a year since Wayne passed, but you haven't really said anything about it. And there was that Bernard thing—Drew mentioned you separated." Linda is speaking quickly—she actually sounds kind of embarrassed. "I didn't want to say anything, since you didn't tell me, yourself, but…are you doing okay?"

Roxanne shoves herself into the corner of the sofa, folds her free arm across her chest, and glowers. "I'm doing _fine_, Mom."

"Okay, okay—I'm just _asking_. And everything's okay with…the city?"

Roxanne stiffens. "I thought you were going to bed."

"You're a very trusting person and I don't want you to get hurt, that's all," her mother says. "You did _another_ interview with—about that _incident _this summer, before you left on your trip and, and it might be fixing the damage but that doesn't mean it isn't—"

Roxanne can feel the blood drain from her face. "Mother, I _will not_ discuss this, I am angry and worried and tired and _not in the mood_—"

"Roxanne—"

"—told you before, you either talk about him with _basic human decency_ or you don't talk—"

"—_isn't human_—"

"—and I _will _hang up on you, I have told you before, I won't tell you again; Mother I swear to god if we have to have this discussion _one more time_ I'm just going to stop answering the phone when you call."

After a couple seconds of silence, her mother sighs. "All right, Roxanne. I love you."

"Love you too. Goodnight."

Roxanne stabs End Call, then tosses the phone to the other end of the sofa and glares at it. So much for pleasant conversation.

The issue hasn't been dropped. She and her mother have been arguing about this for years—although it's definitely intensified over the past month or so—and have gotten nowhere with each other. _I'm just glad Megamind never found out_, she thinks, and then she can't hold it in anymore. She brings her legs up to her chest, wraps her arms around them, and puts her head down on her knees and cries.

* * *

The trouble with initiating his plan in the evening is Megamind doesn't have any more meetings today to distract himself with or numb himself out on. And he's having trouble focusing on any of his priority projects. Having trouble getting Roxanne out of his head, still. The shock on her face, the bitter snarl of her voice. The way she smiled yesterday when she came home and he turned and saw her. Standing in the doorway with her suitcase, straight from traveling. She didn't even go to her apartment, first; she wanted to see him. Wanted a nap in _his_ bed, not her own.

_It's over!_ he snaps at himself. _It's done! Enough!_

Enough. He's going down to the sodium dump tanks and lose himself in the hiss of the steam generators overhead. Go contemplate gravity and the standard model; keep trying to reconcile those. He'll pin that cloud down eventually; Metro Man exists, so they _must_ reconcile somewhere, somehow. He just needs to go and—go and—

_go find someone who loves you_

—go and figure it out. Gravity! Standard model! Always good for a distraction! He grits his teeth and gets to his feet.

First things first: coffee. He's not planning on getting any sleep, tonight. There's a cot and a blanket down behind the sodium dump tanks if he needs them, but he really doesn't _want _to sleep. After the day he's had, he's going to have _dreams_, and they aren't going to be good dreams, either.

But five hours later, the standard model is still resolutely gravity-free and Roxanne is still resolutely stuck in his head, and his eyelids are heavy and everything he's ever done is a nasty tangle in the back of his brain, and so Megamind finally gives up his fight against himself and curls up on top of the blanket behind the sodium tanks, shivering, and closes his eyes.

It's fine. He's fine.

After a few minutes, he rolls over and stretches out on his back. Doing this alone in a place that isn't his couch or his bed is a recipe for a unique class of nightmare, but. It's fine, he's fine. If he has a nightmare, well…he'll call that justice. It's fine.

He's fine.

* * *

_As with any large machine, this one will take time to reach full power._

_If his calculations are correct_—_and they are—it should take fourteen hours to reach capacity. The current is strong, but it starts out weak, that's the key, that's what will keep it from overloading._

_He grins, and sets his watch._

_13:59._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this probably sounds weird, considering this is some of y'all's first time seeing her, but Linda is actually one of the characters I'm proudest of in terms of eventual character development. Roxanne's family, in general, I'm pretty pleased with. I'm particularly excited for you to meet her brother! :D
> 
> PS for the old crew, look! a small new scene! :D I dunno, I just felt we should see a little of Megamind's mindset that night. Do a sort of, you know in movies where they split screen to show how unhappy two characters are at the same time? An attempt was made!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle warning for emetophobes in this chapter, there is some puking in early scenes.

Megamind has been quiet all morning, which is unusual, but Minion is pretty sure he's just tired. He was up later than usual last night—Minion had to shake him awake where he was hissing and twitching behind the sodium drums on the third sublevel of the Lair; the bots know better than to touch him when his voice cuts out like that—and on top of that, he had another early-morning meeting with city officials about the Metro Tower rebuild. He always comes back from those with several dozen new problems tumbling through his mind, and the businessmen render him numb and unhappy.

"People's lives are just _numbers _to them," he had said one night recently. "Dollar figures. Minion, I don't _understand _it," and then he wandered off and sat staring into a viewfinder Minion hadn't seen before for the rest of the night.

Lord knows what he was looking at. He had fallen asleep there, eyes pressed against the repurposed binocular goggles, until Minion very gently settled him back in his chair and took a peek through the scope. All he saw was a bunch of stars—not even anything special, as far as he could tell. But they must mean something, because that viewfinder has been appearing more and more frequently. It's out this morning. Megamind must have fallen back asleep stargazing last night after Minion woke him; there are marks in his blue skin—two deep indents like parentheses around his eyes, which are already deeply shadowed from lack of rest. He looks _awful_.

Minion, who was shocked almost speechless by his friend's disheveled appearance, is almost defiantly cheerful over breakfast. Megamind refuses his coffee outright, so Minion starts cracking jokes until _finally _one of them gets a flicker of a smile, and then he tells Megamind _very firmly_ that he's put half a caffeine tablet in the jelly doughnut and Megamind is to eat _all of it_. Megamind sighs a lot and grumps at him, but he eats it, and soon everything is right with the world again.

Until everything goes sideways.

Megamind has finished what little else he could choke down of his breakfast other than the doughnut and is halfway to the kitchen door when he hears Minion gag. He spins as his watch starts beeping its _find-Minion_ alarm at him and he's at Minion's side in two bounds; the third brings him up to perch on the shoulder of the gorilla suit. He's started unscrewing the dome with deft hands even before Minion is finished dropping to his knuckles and locking the suit down. 

"What is it," Megamind gasps, "which one, Minion, can you tell?" The tank comes free; he upends it as quickly as he can so no water is lost. There's a selectively permeable biofiltration membrane on the bottom that keeps it from leaking, but the membrane isn't strong enough to hold up the weight of the water inside for much longer than a moment or so. Minion is jostled a bit, but it's better than forcing him to breathe air, especially when he's like this.

Minion groans and shakes his head. "Give me a second," he says, his voice thin and muffled by water and glass, "It's _jangling_, it's weird."

Megamind bites his lip. If one of the reactors is bad, Minion would be the first to know—he resonates to their hum. "But it is a reactor, right?"

"It—yes." Minion nods weakly, gags again, and all his lights flicker. "Agh, _ow_. Yes. It'll be the cold one, Sir. It's out of whack, it's like…it's like there's a third note but it's gone all dissonant and awful. Usually it's a perfect fifth, but now it's like it's been augmented or something."

Megamind's eyebrows shoot up. A _third _note?

"Hang on," he tells Minion, and steps from the gorilla suit to the kitchen table to his chair to the floor. Ordinarily he would simply hop down, but that would hurt Minion, and Megamind _will not _hurt Minion. "I'll change your water and then I'll run and look."

But Minion shakes his head. "No time," he manages, and then he throws up, his lights flickering again.

Megamind winces. Nobody likes being sick, but for Minion it's worse because he has to breathe that water.

"Okay, all right," Megamind says. He keeps his tone short, no-nonsense. There will be time to freak out later. "Pool?"

Minion is quite literally green around the gills—or he would be, if he had gills—and doesn't say anything. He can't. If he opens his mouth…

Megamind nods once, decisive. "Pool," he mutters, answering his own question, and breaks into a run, heart hammering triple beats behind his ribcage. Minion is throwing up again.

This sort of thing has happened only once before, years ago, back before Megamind realized just how scarce muons really were and moved his traps to low Earth orbit. After that, he and Minion had run a series of tests to see how the little ichthyoid would respond to different malfunctions with the generators. At best, Minion had felt mildly nauseated; at worst, he'd screamed until his eyes rolled back in his head and he'd become unresponsive. Megamind had wanted to stop testing after that one, but Minion insisted they continue until they'd tried everything that could possibly go wrong. It had not been a pleasant experience.

But _this _response, with the flickering, this isn't on any of Megamind's lists, which means it's something new, something neither he nor Minion ever thought of. And that thought—the thought that he overlooked something that's now causing Minion to shake and vomit and hear notes that aren't there—scares him worse than almost anything else can.

* * *

Roxanne is getting out of the shower when it happens. Her stomach lifts, churns, turns over, and up comes breakfast. There is no warning. She goes from being completely fine to doubled-over and heaving in under two seconds. It's just enough time for her to turn and get sick in the tub instead of on her bathroom floor.

She hiccups, gulps, staggers to her toilet and falls to her knees, retches again.

It isn't food poisoning. She knows it isn't food poisoning. She isn't sure _how _she knows it, but she does, the same as she knows the sky is blue and water is wet. It's just something that's true. And the little voice in the back of her mind that is her intuition is screaming at her, and it's screaming a surprisingly coherent message:

_Get to Minion_.

It's bizarre. She wants to see Minion more than she wants literally anything else, including to stop being sick; she needs to get to the Lair, needs to get there _now_. She grabs her phone off the bathroom counter and ignores the two new voicemails in favor of speed-dial.

"Pick up, pick up, pick up." She chants it through clenched teeth, her eyes watering as the phone rings. She was planning to wait a day or two to cool off and then head back to the Lair to have a Talk with Megamind, but it looks like there's been a change of plans.

"Hi, you've reached Jocelyn Andrada's cell, I cannot come to the phone right now—"

She hangs up, swearing and scared (and also slightly irritated because how, _how _is she supposed to get dressed when she's like this? and come on, she _just _brushed her teeth), and stabs a finger at Akos in her contact directory. She hadn't meant to take him up on his offer of on-call service, but she really doesn't have much of a choice.

He picks up after the first ring. "Yello."

"Akos, help," and that's all she can get out before she's bent double again with her face in the toilet. Really, this is getting ridiculous. There's nothing left to get rid of! "Help it's Roxanne Ritchi and I need to get to the power plant _right_ _now_."

"Fifteen—yeah, _same to you, asshole!_" There's a squeal, followed by some distant honking that Roxanne might have found funny another day. "Sorry. Fifteen minutes."

"_Hurry_," she gasps, and stumbles off in search of clothes. The floor falls away from her, rolling like the deck of a ship.

Five minutes later she has reached the conclusion that sweatpants are God, and her shirt can go die in a fire because she is _not bothering_. Getting into underwear was hard enough—she isn't even going to attemptto navigate a bra—and it's a chilly morning for August and Roxanne is not going to deal with more than one set of sleeves right now. She crawls into her old red lifeguard hoodie. That's going to have to be good enough.

That done, she makes her way to the kitchen and retrieves her stash of plastic grocery bags and stuffs a bunch of them in her hoodie pocket before staggering to the door, pausing on the way to grab her cell phone, her purse, and the envelope of emergency cash hidden under the little table by the door. She isn't she how much she's going to need Akos to help her with.

Ordinarily, she's okay with taking the stairs down, but not today. Today she pushes the elevator button repeatedly, taking some small comfort in its persistent clicking. _Minion, what is going on?_ she wonders, and curls over one of the bags, heaving. Nothing comes up. No surprises there; she hasn't even had breakfast yet.

But it does get her thinking. Why is she so bent on getting to _Minion_, of all people?

* * *

"Almost there, hang on, we're almost there, okay?" Megamind scrambles around a corner and down yet another flight of stairs—_Why _is Minion's pool so far away from the kitchen? And why isn't there some sort of elevator or transportation device? Poor design planning on _somebody's _part. Another day he might have made a joke, but today he just shrugs it off as another failure. _Add it to the pile._

"With you all the way, Sir." Minion coughs, gags, dry heaves. "Ow. I'm broadcasting; once I'm out of the water you should be able to feel some of this. See what—see what you make of it." His voice trails off at the end. If Megamind wasn't running, he would have gone weak at the knees. Minion has _never _been like this.

"Okay, Minion, okay. Shut up, okay?"

There, there's the pool ahead, and Megamind skids into the room and flings himself onto his knees at the water's edge, punches through the membrane on Minion's dome and curls both hands under the boxy body, carefully lifts his friend free of the tank.

His stomach roils as soon as his fingers come into contact with Minion's ventral ganglia, but he grits his teeth and holds onto his friend just long enough to get a feel for the sensation before he drops him into the pool. Minion sinks to the bottom, where he rests on the sand between a fan coral and a rather startled starfish and blinks miserably up at Megamind.

Megamind has put him in the shallow end—only three or four feet of water, warmer at this end than at the other, which is thirty feet deep and cool—in case he has to get in with Minion later. Most of their first-aid supplies are on deck; if he needs to tend to Minion, it's best to keep him as close to the surface as possible.

He swallows hard, then unhooks a couple of two-way radios from the side of the pool. He reaches into the water and places one at Minion's side. "I'm going to check the reactors," he says into the other. "I'll—I'll run some diagnostics and then I'll be right back. If anything changes, if you need me, the button is right by your fin."

Minion rolls an eye downwards and nods. The green light on the radio shines reassuringly up through the water.

"Back soon," Megamind promises, then gets to his feet and flees.

_Oh no, oh please no, what is it, what did I miss?_ He runs headlong into the controls without bothering to slow down, then pushes himself back a step and sends his hands flying over the keys while he scans the output desperately for any sign of trouble. "Nibs!" he cries over his shoulder. "Nibs, Hex, Oort!" Minion is definitely nauseated so the problem _has _to be with the cold fusion reactor, it has to be; that's the one that makes Minion sick, the muon reactor just makes him _hurt_—

He strikes blindly out at the screen, his nerves ragged. Why is his best friend the damn canary? _Why does it have to be Minion, why can't it be me, not Minion, not Minion, not Minion_—

Behind him, brainbots cluster and whirl and three drift forward, _bowg_ing and waiting for instructions.

"Oort, I need you to check on the muon reactor. Nothing should be wrong but it doesn't hurt to check. Take some of the others with you. Hex, Nibs," he snaps as Oort zooms away with a small fleet of other brainbots, "you're amphibious, you check the cold fusion reactor. Remember to wear protective gear and stay away from the trifluoride containment; I'll be checking that remotely. Report back to me, here, in five minutes. If I'm not here, I'll be down in the pool room with Minion."

He only vaguely registers them leaving; his mind is racing.

What did he miss? What is it? Minion said it sounded like a third frequency had joined the other two, but Megamind can't think of anything that would cause that. Well, another reactor might do the trick, but let's face it, that's just _ridiculous_. Who else would build a cold fusion reactor in Metro City?

"…_Not sure why the scientific community hasn't looked further into cold fusion before… Obviously, it isn't the impossibility they all think it is."_

Who, indeed.

His fingers stutter on the keys as his eyes go wide, and he slides a second keyboard out from under the first. He'll have to work his hands double fast, running two searches at once, but it's necessary. His hands lift and he makes them dance.

Nibs is back only a minute or two later, plugging into the control station next to the one Megamind is currently overclocking.

Brainbot Model 6.3, Designation: 77  
Serial No. 236AR904D  
Alternate: “_Nibs”  
Firmware update 07.14.2010  
Software update 07.14.2010  
Hardware update 07.14.2010

Input: _DIAGNOSTIC_REQUEST  
InputSource: =Daddy  
Output: “_all.quiet.on.the.western.front”

Megamind glances over. His hands never stop moving. “That was fast.”

Input: _SKEPTICISM  
InputSource: =Daddy  
Output: “_previous.output.is.correct”  
Tone: affront

Megamind nods shortly and continues scanning the output readings, looking for something, anything that would indicate Nibs is mistaken. The background check on Robert Anderson hums along two consoles over.

_ Bowg. _

Output: “_ahem”  
Tone: worried  
Megamind glares. “_What _, Nibs.”

Output: “_902TY138F/Alt_Needles_.reports.reactor.activity_12.2124632_km_.north.of.current.location”  
Tone: hesitant

Megamind spins. “_There’s another reactor? _” Nibs whirs and clicks as Oort comes whizzing back. The second brainbot chirps something synthesized about the muon reactor being completely fine, but Megamind holds up a hand. “Nibs?”

Output: “_not.to.put.too.fine.a.point.on.it”  
Output: _PAUSE_FOR_EMPHASIS  
Output: “_yes”  
Tone: apologetic

"Oh for the _love of gravity!"_ Megamind shrieks, slamming both keyboards back into their slots, and runs.

* * *

Roxanne has had just about enough weirdness to last her a lifetime, but right now, she's just glad Megamind hasn't pulled her fingerprints from the Lair's systems. She can still get in.

Akos glances over his shoulder as if he expects a police car to pull around any minute. He had very kindly agreed to help her tend whatever emergency this is, but he looks like he's having some regrets about that now. "Miss Ritchi…" he says nervously, "we'll get in trouble…"

"Trouble can kiss my sweet ass," she rasps, and just about falls on her face when the hidden door slides open, but Akos catches her.

Eyes huge, he holds his arm steady for her as she staggers down a long, narrow hall, making twists and turns that seem to be totally random. All the halls are narrow, and fairly well-lit by white hanging globes, but he can see huge, sweeping rooms behind them, filled with red draperies and tangles of heavy machinery. Steam hisses, somewhere, and loud machinery drones away from behind several walls. "What is this place?"

Roxanne doesn't bother answering. Minion is very, very close, but the sick feeling is intensifying now, somehow. She just hopes they don't run into—

A streak of blue and black flashes across the hall in front of them, shouting something Roxanne doesn't catch at the top of its lungs, and she winces. Akos stops dead. "What was that?"

She wants to turn and leave, but she still desperately wants Minion and she also wants to know why any of this is happening—and, hopefully, how to make it stop—so she presses on. "Welcome to Evil Lair," she mumbles. He'll figure it out eventually, anyway. "I'd give you a tour but I can't really talk much."

"Right, got it," he says, his eyes huge, and he stops asking questions. Roxanne is grateful; she's beginning to get a headache. Megamind seems to have a fondness for spiral staircases, and vertigo and spiral stairs don't mix well.

Slowly, she makes her way to where Megamind ran past, and turns, only to find yet another flight of stairs. She groans.

* * *

"…Stupid, idiot, _brainless _bag of meat and blood and carbon, I've had it up to _here _with humans thinking they have _all the answers_, didn't we make it _clear _that cold fusion was a useless pursuit for him…waste of perfectly good air, if he was any thicker he'd need to be watered twice a day…" He bursts back into the underground pool room at full speed and falls to the floor at the edge of the pool with enough force to bruise his knees. "Minion?"

Minion opens his eyes and looks up at him. "Sir?"

Megamind smiles down at his friend in what he hopes is a reassuring manner but probably isn't. "I found the problem, Minion. Some _fool_ built a reactor."

"Some fool built _two _reactors," Minion wheezes, and it actually takes Megamind a moment or two to realize he's trying to be funny.

He snorts in spite of his worry. "Hah. Listen, I—"

"_Minion?_"

Minion's eyes open wide and Megamind lets out a startled yell and spins around on his knees, overbalances, flails, and falls into the pool with a tremendous splash. He doesn't fall on Minion, thankfully, but the sea urchin keeping Minion company makes a big impression.

"OW," Megamind says, very clearly, and is up and back on dry land before he really even knows what's happening. He says some other things as well, most of them rude.

Minion rises about a foot in the water. "Miss Ritchi?" his voice exclaims from the black box Megamind is still somehow clutching.

Roxanne starts to answer, then bends over, retching horribly into some kind of crinkly bag. Megamind pales. First Minion, now Roxanne? But why would _Roxanne _be sick?

Then he's on his feet and next to her, one hand under her chin, the other pressed to her forehead. "No fever," he says, relieved, but that relief is short-lived when she shoves him roughly away.

"Don't," she mutters, glaring out of watering eyes, "don't _touch_ me, you…you obnoxious…don't _like _you," and it's true. She doesn't like him very much at the moment. She still loves him, but she doesn't like him. It's a confusing distinction, but it's there.

"Wait," says a voice, and an older man with graying hair and a fluffy mustache appears suddenly on Roxanne's other side and pulls her away from Megamind, who's so surprised that he actually lets her go. "You're—you're him, aren't you? You're Megamind."

Megamind rolls his eyes expansively. "No, I am _obviously_ Nikola Tesla. Roxanne, what are you doing here?"

She's been pulling insistently at the strange man's grip on her arm. "I am _trying_," she snarls, abruptly lucid, and Megamind recoils, "to get to _Minion_. Akos, let me go."

He obeys, although he looks like he has some serious misgivings about doing so. As it turns out, those misgivings were spot on, because Roxanne takes three enormous, staggering steps, and goes straight into the deep end of the pool before either of the other two realize she isn't going to stop.

Megamind is after her in a heartbeat, tearing out of his dripping cape and mantle and diving in without a second thought. Roxanne is already kicking herself in a general surface-ward direction, but her eyes are squeezed closed against the salt water and when Megamind grabs her under the arms and locks her close against his chest, she gasps and chokes on water.

Eyes stinging, lungs burning, she breaks the surface and flails. She's a strong swimmer, ordinarily, but right now she's sick and disoriented and someone just grabbed her, so—

Megamind's voice in her ear shocks into her like electricity and she stills. "Easy," he hums. "Easy, Miss Ritchi, I've got you. You're okay. You're fine. Everything's okay, you understand?"

Roxanne chokes, coughs, nods.

"Why'd you grab me," is the first thing out of her mouth when she can speak. "I had it under control."

"You're sick and you fell into thirty feet of water," Megamind says. "I would prefer not to risk it." He swims her easily into the shallows until she can stand, then carefully releases her, turning her around so she faces him. She doesn't look as pale as she had when she came in, and her eyes are clearer. As far as he can tell, she's focusing just fine.

"Listen, I need to go take care of what's making Minion sick, but if you're here to see him I won't stop you. Just…be careful? Okay? Try not to touch anything on the reef. Some of it's poisonous, some of it's venomous, Greta has big teeth; I don't want to come back and find you foaming at the mouth or bleeding or dead or something."

"Reef?" She looks around, gapes at the colorful corals and anemones. "Reef," she breathes, and nods. "I'll be careful."

"You'll be okay?"

She looks back around at Megamind, who is still gripping her carefully by the arms, standing waist-deep in the pool with water beading on his suit and trickling down his thin, worried face.

Then she blinks, and it's like flipping a switch—Megamind's expression goes completely flat and he lets go of her arms. He turns away, sloshing to the low stairs in one corner and exiting the pool without looking back.

"You, Akos," he snaps, pointing, and the other man jumps and looks around at him. "Stay with them until I get back. _Don't _wander off. I need to…take care of a friend." He wheels around and stalks away, moving with an oddly precise, clipped gait that Roxanne doesn't recognize.

She puzzles over that for a moment, then realizes with a start that she feels completely fine now. As a child, she'd had problems with car-sickness—she would feel incredibly ill in the family station wagon, but as soon as the vehicle stopped and she was allowed to get out she would be fine. The way she feels now is almost exactly the same as she used to feel years ago when she stepped out of the car—okay, but searching, somehow, as if her body itself were wondering why. _Weird_.

* * *

_It's on, it's charged, it's working—of course it's working, he knew it would. There's no reason for it not to work. And he knows his calculations are precise and correct._

_He hadn't expected the core to be quite that shade of orange, but he'll take what he can get. The output readings are all positive, except for a few glitches which will probably work themselves out._

_Life, today, is good. And tomorrow, when the reactor is performing at capacity and glowing blue-white the way it should be, he will call a press conference, and soon his name will be in headlines all over the world, and life will be even better. That's worth a few favors, a few bills of sale, a lost job. More than worth it._

"_Victory is mine," he says quietly, and shivers. He's always wanted to say that, and the way his words echo around the stage and the huge, empty room is positively delicious._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh hey Greta got a mention, hmmmmm I wonder if anything else from Dive made it into Cold Fusion :3c 
> 
> Will try to have chapter 8 up tomorrow or Tuesday, my lovely friends.


	8. Chapter 8

Akos crosses carefully to the edge of the pool and looks in. "Pool" is actually sort of an understatement; this is more like a very large pond or a very small, very deep indoor lake, which explains why he and Roxanne needed to go down so many flights of stairs to reach it—it's underground. It's easily fifty yards from end to end, with shallow steps leading down into the far end where Roxanne is, and the sides of the pool seem very steeply sloped rather than going straight down. But the size of the pool is not what Akos is staring at.

He's staring at the reef. There's a full-scale coral reef in there, complete with brightly-colored coral and fish and-plants? are they plants? They aren't green but—

He raises his voice and is totally unsurprised when it shakes slightly. "How deep is this?"

He doesn't get an answer. Roxanne seems to be talking to the pool in a low, urgent voice, clutching the two-way radio Megamind handed her when he left. Akos moves a little closer to Roxanne's end of the pool, which—hooray—looks a lot shallower and therefore a lot safer. Fish flit back and forth under the water, minding their peaceful business, oblivious to Akos and Roxanne.

"But I don't _get _it," Roxanne is saying. "There's just no reason I should be able to receive some kind of—of hormonal message from you when you're halfway across the city, in a tank of water!"

Minion shrugs wearily. "I don't know either, Miss Ritchi. Sir will probably be able to explain it when he gets back."

Roxanne can think of several ways to reply to that. Finally she goes with the simplest. "I don't know that I particularly want to be here when he does."

"What? Why not?" Minion stares up at her, obviously surprised, and—oh, crap; he doesn't know what happened? He must not, with how confused he looks.

Well, there's nothing else for it. She takes a deep breath. "You're not going to believe this, but when I came to the Lair last night, Megamind was making out with some other woman."

Minion blinks, opens his mouth, closes it, and blinks again. "You're right," he says after a moment of stunned silence. "I _don't _believe it. He _wouldn't_."

"That was what I thought!" Roxanne shakes her head. "But I did _see _them together, I swear I'm not making this up."

"No, of course," he says quickly, his eyes huge. "But. He, he wouldn't. He _wouldn't_."

"I thought that, too, Minion; I—I _saw _it and I still couldn't believe it, so—so then I thought—the three-dimensional projectors? Maybe?" He just stares at her, and she swallows. "You know him best. If it wasn't real, then—then _why_ would he do that? And either way, why would he let me see? Because it was something he _wanted_ me to see; it must have been."

He's quiet, sort of frozen. Roxanne turns and sloshes over to the steps to sit down in the water. She glances up at Akos, but he doesn't seem to be paying much attention; he's crouched at the side of the rippling pool, staring down into the water. The room is full of echoes and water-noises, both from the reef pool and the tanks on shelves around the walls. Well, Roxanne is going to talk about this anyway, even if Akos is listening; he had mentioned discretion specifically when he gave her his contact information, and she desperately wants Minion's take on all this.

"Is he trying to drive me away?" she asks after a moment, when Minion doesn't speak. "Trying to keep me safe, or something? Make me leave him so I don't get caught in some kind of crossfire? He said some things to me after lunch when I got back from my trip, and I thought…I don't know what I thought."

Minion shakes himself, frowns a little. "This explains why he was so off at breakfast," he mutters, and then he's quiet for another few seconds, fins flicking with agitation. Finally he looks back up at Roxanne. "Miss Ritchi, he and I both know you can handle yourself; we've known that for years. I don't think he can be seriously worried about that. But he hasn't been…himself, lately? All these meetings and public appearances have been doing a real number on his systems, and his judgment is…he's second-guessing everything right now. Everything is just _so weird_. For both of us, really."

Roxanne scowls and opens her mouth, but Minion fans his fins and sends light rippling up his dorsal ridges, and she stops.

"I'm not trying to make excuses!" he says quickly. "I'm not. It's just…it's like he's stuck watching himself. None of this comes naturally to him; he has to think about every move. And he's scared." Minion swallows hard. "This is the happiest I've seen him in a long time, and he—he doesn't want to lose you, but—"

"He has a funny way of showing it."

Minion swallows. "But he is," he continues quietly. "Going to lose you. I'm…I've been trying to steer him away from thinking like that, I was hoping this would last longer, but…"

Roxanne stares down at him. "What? Why is he going to lose me?"

Minion is silent.

(Off to one side, Akos straightens and leaves the pool room to head back up the stairs. There were towels behind one of the doors he and Roxanne passed on the way down; he's sure of it. Megamind said not to wander, but Akos knows towels are going to be needed eventually and Megamind isn't here anymore, so.)

"Minion, _please_," she says, frustrated and urgent, "please, if you know something…"

He hesitates, then sets his jaw and looks up at her again. "I asked you once," he says, "what your intentions were toward him. And you said he was your friend. You said you owed him that much." Roxanne nods, mystified, and Minion asks, "If I asked you the same question again, right now—has your answer changed? Are you still his friend because you owe him?"

She stares down at him, completely floored. "Minion, I _love_ him," she exclaims. "You—you know this!"

"I do, but what happens when you decide to go?" he asks, challenging. "What then? You won't be here forever, you've been pulling away recently, so—what then?"

"I won't be here forever?" she echoes, stunned. Yes, it's possible she won't be; none of her other relationships have worked out, but… "I won't be here for—says who? Says _who?_ Pulling away? And what is…when I _decide to go_? What does _that_ mean?" she exclaims. "Minion, I thought you trusted me! What the hell?"

"I do!" he exclaims. "I do trust you, I do, I know you don't mean to hurt him." He twists his ganglia together under him. "It's just—the long term, I don't think you've really considered whether—what happens when you decide you want to settle down?"

Roxanne stares at him. _Settle down?_ "Who says I can't settle down here, with you two?" Minion's mouth falls open and Roxanne's heart twists. Holy shit, did he seriously think she wouldn't want to—? "Minion, I am not just going to turn around someday and go, _well, this has been fun but I think I'll go find a real relationship now, bye!_ and take off for no reason," she says. She was assuming he already knew this but good lord, maybe she does need to spell it out. "I _love_ him. I couldn't do that to him."

"But," he says, staring at her, "but you're—I, but he's—"

"This isn't a _game_ to me!" She swallows hard, angry tears rising in her throat. "I wouldn't have started dating him in the _first place_ if I wasn't considering him as a potential _life partner_. If I wasn't interested in the _long term_ with him! Minion, I am not just here for shits and giggles! I thought you _knew_ that!"

Minion's eyes are the biggest she's ever seen them, his jaw hanging open, his brow ridge peaked in the middle. "You-you," he stammers, "you—see him as a viable partner? A potential mate?"

"I don't know what those terms mean to you," she says flatly, rubbing the heel of her hand over her eyes. "And I do not have any idea what you meant by _pulling away recently_. But I am still invested in this. I want—I _want_ to make this work. I want this to keep working." She swallows again. Breathes deeply. "I want…I know I want to grow old with somebody, someday," she says carefully, because no, that isn't true of everyone and Roxanne is beginning to realize just how few assumptions she can make about what Minion or Megamind are able to take for granted about relationships. "I want to grow old with somebody and I am dating Megamind because I'm trying to figure out if I want to do that with him. If he would want that with me."

He gapes at her for another few seconds, and then he says, sounding oddly high and breathless, "I…Miss Ritchi, _oh_, I…I didn't realize. I _hoped_ but I thought…I thought, well, he was happy, and you seemed…I generally try not to think about the future, as a rule, but I thought—never mind; I was—wrong, obviously. I'm…I'm sorry."

She shakes her head, too dumbfounded for words.

Minion swallows. "If…but Miss Ritchi, if you are serious," he says, "if, if you really are, then…please, you have to understand. Sir might…he might always have some trouble believing you might stay." He picks up his radio in his mouth and comes to rest on the step with her, a safe distance away, places the radio between them. "He forgets, sometimes," he says. "He forgets, he…withdraws. Even with me, sometimes. But he does always come back." He looks up at her. "He comes back and he pulls through. It's just. Hard, sometimes."

"That's okay." Roxanne shakes her head. "Minion, I don't need this to be easy. We can work together on the hard stuff. I just need him to not _trick me into leaving_."

He smiles a little. "That's understandable," he says. "That's entirely reasonable. You…really? You might really stay?"

"I don't know," Roxanne says. "I don't know. I am pretty blisteringly angry with him right now, but…depending on what happens when I talk to him about it…" She trails off, sighs. She does want to keep trying. "It's possible. I might."

Minion nods. After a while, he quietly says, "_I_ hope you stay."

Roxanne blinks down at him, startled.

"I would miss you," Minion says. And then, before Roxanne can react to that, he asks, "Miss Ritchi, do you know why Sir would go and visit our old school?"

Roxanne recoils, blindsided and trying to switch tracks. "What?"

"He was acting so strange after you left—threw himself into a random project like I haven't seen him do in ages. I reviewed his activity just prior to that, and he went out to the old schoolhouse on the point and stayed there for about half an hour before coming back to the Lair. I've never known him to do that before."

Roxanne stares down at him, then scrabbles in her hoodie pocket for her cell phone, which, thankfully, is waterproof (because when you're a regular prop in a career supervillain's antics, you learn to spring for a durable phone). The two new voicemails she's been too busy or too distracted to listen to glare accusingly up at her.

"Miss Ritchi?"

"Hang on, I just—I need to check something." Because if Megamind went and visited Wayne and Wayne didn't try to warn her about it, Roxanne _will _find a way past his invulnerability. And she _will_ strangle him.

And, yes, lo and behold, the missed calls are from Mom and WS. Awesome. Muttering threats under her breath, she calls her voicemail.

_You have two unheard messages. First unheard message:_

_Hey, Roxie, it's…me. Sorry to call out of nowhere like this, but your boyfriend…is he your boyfriend? About time you found somebody, good for you…uh, anyway, Blue was just here, I think he's going to do…something stupid, I dunno exactly what. He said…it was weird and kind of convoluted, he was sort of rambling for a while there but it sounds like the goal is to make you hate him? I dunno. Sounded to me like he's just scared you'll throw everything in his face and take off, and he figured he'd beat you to it, save you the trouble. Load of crap if you ask me. Or maybe it isn't. Everything else has kinda exploded on him, you know? Can't really blame him._ (A pause. Static.) _I dunno, I still think it's crap._

_Good luck talking some sense into him, but… _(something that sounds like a sigh)…_look, just be careful, okay? I don't know what's got him so up-cited, but I haven't seen him this tightly-wound since grade school. Oh, and don't yell. He, uh, he doesn't always react well to loud. Dunno if you've run into that yet. Anyway, I'll leave the details up to you, just wanted to…you know, call and give you a heads-up. You should come hang soon, catch up a bit. Both of you. Sounds weird, but I kinda miss the little guy. Say hey to the fish for me, would you?_

_Next unheard message:_

Roxanne deletes the message from Mom without listening to it and closes her phone.

Okay. So, yes, that sounds like confirmation that Megamind is, indeed, operating under a misapprehension similar to Minion's regarding how serious she is about him. But trying to make her _hate_ him, though, that's…a whole other level of wacky. She's going to have to think about that one.

On the plus side, it sounds like he doesn't actually think she needs protecting. If that's the case, Roxanne isn't half as angry as she was before. Or—no. That's not strictly accurate. She's relieved. She's relieved but she is still just as angry; the level of manipulation here is honestly breathtaking. But they can work through it. She's sure they can, if this is just a one-off, if he doesn't try to trick her again. And it'll take time, but Roxanne suspects Megamind is just as stubborn as she is, in his way. From what she's seen, he clings to his ideas with a silent steadfastness that would make any barnacle proud, so all Roxanne needs to do is persuade him to cling to the idea that she won't just up and leave him at the drop of a hat. Or at least to come talk to her if he's having doubts. Or at _least_ to not force her to leave.

Because the thing is…she is enjoying dating him! She really is! It's nice! Being with Megamind feels almost shockingly easy, occasional misunderstandings aside. And yes, this particular situation is screwed up, but she can't help feeling like Wayne has a point: Megamind's whole life has been varying degrees of screwed up. He can't just turn around and ignore that lifetime of conditioning. 

And Minion had a point, too: Megamind has no reason to know how very serious Roxanne feels about him. She's assumed he would know what she means when she says she loves him, but really, for all he knows, he's just a fun little diversion on her way to something more serious. It might take some time for him to believe she can be interested in him as a long-term partner. It's definitely going to take time for him to trust her to stand by him through various relationship difficulties.

But that doesn't mean Roxanne should have to put up with any more harebrained, manipulative schemes like this one. 

"Okay," she says after a few quiet seconds tick by and she turns this over in her mind, "it sounds like he's gone further off the deep end than I thought."

"Yes?" Minion dances a little in the water, sculling his fins, impatient. "What happened? Who called you? What did Sir go do?"

Roxanne looks down and smiles a little. "He went and talked to an old friend."

"A friend?" Minion sounds dubious. "We don't have friends."

Roxanne shrugs. "An old enemy, then. It…isn't that important, really; I think he probably just needed to get out for a bit." And then, to change the subject, "Minion, why are we both okay now?"

"Could be a defense mechanism, I think," he tells her after a moment. He sends her a look that says he knows exactly what she's doing, but he doesn't actually call her on it. "Endorphins? Also, the acoustics of the pool room throw off the humming, so it's just white noise and I can't resonate to it. I'm not affected by it, so if you've somehow bonded to me biochemically, the way Sir has, neither are you." He pauses. "Goodness, that sounds odd."

Roxanne slides down a step, deeper into the warm salt water, wrapping her arms around her chest. The water is warm, but the air in Evil Lair is as cool as it always is and she's beginning to shiver. "I don't think I can possibly do anything like what you're suggesting."

"Why not?"

"Well…Megamind got you down here, right? And he left, so I'm assuming he didn't react the way you did."

"Not until he got me out of the water for a few seconds, no." He frowns. "Hmm."

Roxanne shakes her head. "Also, I'm sorry, but…Minion, you're an alien fish. It's just not _possible_."

Minion looks mildly offended for a second, then nods. "Okay. Maybe not. But you feel fine now, and I feel fine now, and we got sick at the same time, so _something _has to be going on there…are you maybe resonating to the reactors, too?"

She shrugs. "I have no idea. I don't think I could, but who knows?"

He blinks up at her, concerned. "Not to change the subject, but you should probably get out of the pool," he says. "You look cold."

"I am cold, but the water is warmer than the air and—"

"Blankets!" Akos announces loudly, reentering the room with his arms full of them, and Roxanne jumps. "I found blankets instead of towels and _who are you talking to?_"

Roxanne looks over at him, surprised. "Minion. You know, Megamind's friend? He wears a robotic gorilla suit?"

Akos shakes his head. "I try to stay out of the way of the superhero-supervillain stuff. Now get out of the water before you catch your death or drown or something."

"_Thank_ you," Minion mutters. "Honestly, what is it with bipeds and refusing to listen to me?"

Roxanne finally obeys, wrapping one of the blankets around her and huddling gratefully into it. Then an idea strikes and she steps back over to the pool. "Minion, I want to try something and I want to get into dry clothes and I think I can do both at the same time. I'm going to leave Akos with you for a few minutes, okay?"

Minion frowns a little, but nods.

Roxanne turns to the cabbie and hands him the little walkie-talkie. "Akos, I'm so sorry, I know you're on the clock, I swear I'll pay you, but can you just…can you stay here? I'll be back really soon. If I get sick again, I'll just come back in here."

Akos shrugs and nods. "I got nothing better to do, sure. This is the most exciting thing to happen to me all year."

Roxanne nods her thanks and jogs towards the door, her wet shoes squishing with every step. The room might be the only thing blocking the sick feeling, but she doesn't think it is, and once she's in the hallway she stops and waits for a few seconds.

Nothing happens.

_So maybe I am connected to Minion, then_, Roxanne thinks, frowning. Huh. That's…an odd concept. Maybe it's something similar to what Minion said a couple days ago, about growing attuned to other people's chemical signatures. If her body is tuning itself to both Megamind and Minion, aligning on some level with their bodies, but the connection isn't strong enough yet to be consistent…is that even a thing? Is that a thing that can happen?

Or maybe she doesn't feel sick now because her body is defending itself and turning against the offending frequency? Or something about the salt water?

Or some combination of the three?

She frowns.

Well, she feels okay now, and that's the most important thing, because it means she's able to hurry back along the maze of stairs and hallways to Megamind's bedroom and find dry clothes in the drawer he cleared out for her to use a couple weeks ago. It doesn't take too long to find a pair of black yoga pants and a dry shirt and bra.

She also finds the fancy dressing gown she had bought and stored under the bed so she wouldn't have to keep borrowing Megamind's bathrobes and capes. The Lair is usually on the chilly side, and Roxanne isn't comfortable just wandering around in her pajamas. Besides, the dressing gown is one she'd thought Megamind would approve of—it's full-length and made of black satiny polyester with blue collar and lining, and there's a blue sash that loops twice around her waist and has tassels on the ends. There are hidden fasteners up the front. Roxanne is pretty sure it's meant to be some kind of slinky dress, but she's also pretty sure she'd never wear it in public if there was any chance of anyone recognizing her.

But the flowing sleeves are long, and it's warmer than nothing, and she has to admit that it fits aesthetically with the Lair even if the blue is paler than the stuff Megamind usually wears. She puts it on over her clothes. What the hell, why not? It makes her feel evil. It's not a bad feeling.

She's still grinning when she re-enters the pool room and finds Akos and Minion in a heated debate about—various kinds of cooking oil, it sounds like. Akos is lying on the floor with the walkie-talkie clutched in one hand, his other hand white-knuckled on the side of the pool as he peers into the water.

She decides not to ask.

"Minion, I have a question," she calls, going back over to the pool. Akos looks up at her and raises his eyebrows, but says nothing about her outfit. "Where did Megamind actually go?"

"Assuming he has the watch or the car, you could look him up on console 4 upstairs," Minion replies. "I think he was being sarcastic about the 'friend,' though. And please tell _your _friend here that peanut oil is best for deep frying. He keeps going on about bacon fat."

"Don't ask me about frying, I burn salads and you know it," Roxanne says. "I would have thought he would go and fix the reactors, first." She pulls out her phone. _mom—which is better for deep frying, peanut oil or bacon grease?_

Minion looks troubled. "About that," he says slowly. "He and I discovered ages ago that if something goes wrong with the muon reactor, I feel it all up and down my spines. It's the cold fusion reactor that makes me sick. But we tested everything that could possibly go wrong, and it's never felt like that before."

Roxanne blinks and sits down in a dry spot on the floor, cross-legged. "What does it feel like?" Her phone beeps twice. _both. mostly pnut, add 1/3 or 1/4 bacon for flavor. bacons like lard, lots of flavor, but has low burn and smoke point. pnut holds up better for deepfry. plz dont hurt yourself._

She grins and shows the phone to Akos, who looks at it and grimaces.

"It felt like there was a third note in with the other two." Minion shakes his head. "And Sir did say somebody built a reactor, but—that doesn't make any sense. Sir is the only one who knows how to do cold fusion _and _has enough energy requirements to make it actually feasible."

Roxanne looks up, startled. _No_, she thinks, because it can't be, not _really_. Not _seriously_.

_Can it?_

"A third reactor?" she repeats faintly. "A cold fusion reactor?"

"It would have to be, I think. But it's…it's all wrong. It feels weird. Jangly. Like hitting your funny bone," Minion says, then adds, "not that I would know."

_Robert Anderson_. "That _toad_," Roxanne whispers, shocked. "He built a reactor. He actually _built _one."

"What?" Minion asks, just as Akos says, "Who?"

Roxanne answers neither question. She's thinking. Distantly, she registers that Akos and Minion have resumed their discussion.

Anderson built a reactor, and Megamind must have gone to shut it down. But Roxanne very seriously doubts that he had time or inclination to do the same digging into Anderson's background that she did after that thoroughly obnoxious interview. And if that's true, and he doesn't know who he's really dealing with…

"Minion," she says quietly, and something in her voice brings both of her companions up short. "How often has Megamind fought the forces of good without you backing him up? I mean, how often has he fought alone?"

"The forces of good? Like a real battle? I don't know, a couple of times," Minion says. "Two, maybe three."

Roxanne rises, feeling more than a little bit shaky. "If I take you out of this room, will you get sick again?"

"Almost definitely. Sorry."

She rubs a hand over her eyes, unable to believe what she is about to do. "Brilliant," she mutters. "Splendid. Okay. You…you have to stay here, then." She chews her lip, trying to remember all the rejected contraptions and inventions Minion showed her yesterday along with the working items. "I need to go."

She turns towards the door, then back to the pool. "Akos. I'm sorry, but I'm going to need your help again."

* * *

It's only after Megamind has broken into the abandoned waterfront theater that he realizes he has next to no idea what he's doing. Breaking and entering? Smooth sailing. Taking down a cold fusion reactor and the misguided professor who created it? Should be simple.

Taking down the misguided professor who created it _without hurting him?_ That one is going to be a little more difficult. Also, he left without the de-gun, which he really shouldn't have done, but he doesn't always wear it when he's at home and he completely forgot to grab it before he left; Roxanne's sudden alarming appearance really threw him for a loop. All he wanted to do was escape before she could scream at him the way he's sure she wants to. He'd pulled out of the Lair with little more than what was already in the invisible car.

But Anderson isn't _dangerous_, right? This shouldn't be too hard, right? He's just a villain, sort of. Not even a particularly skilled villain. Megamind knows villainy like the back of his hand. This should be cake.

But a villain would say something like, "You should have been here hours ago, I've been _waiting_," or, "Aha! You've fallen into my trap!" upon the arrival of their adversary. Not, "Oh, _come the fuck on_," which is what Anderson says when Megamind steps to the edge of the balcony and looks down.

It isn't fair. In these sorts of situations, the hero is supposed to speak first and take the villain by surprise. Anderson isn't playing by the rules.

But the rules don't matter anymore when Megamind sees what's on the stage of the old theater, burning like a very small sun in the middle of a sphere that shouldn't even be out of the water, let alone transparent. And what Megamind says is, "Anderson, what have you _done?_"

"You're supposed to be a genius," the man snaps. "Can't you tell?"

"Look, this is how these things go," Megamind snaps back. "I ask what you've done, you reveal your cunning plan, I haul you off to jail." But he's got a sneaking suspicion that Anderson, like Hal, really doesn't care how the game is played. He decides to forgo the usual procedure. "Listen, you have to power that down. It's all wrong."

"And I suppose you know how to fix it?" Anderson's lip curls and he shakes his head. "Please. This is going to save the city _millions _in energy bills. Clean energy, too."

"Oh _really_," Megamind says, using the driest voice he can manage. "Is that before or after the millions in _repairs _and _cleanup _bills it's going to cost?" He shakes his head. "You know, there won't even _be _a city in…I give it a week, tops. I can't believe you built that thing on land. Shut it off."

"Not happening."

"Don't make me come down there," Megamind warns, careful not to sound too desperate.

Anderson puts his hands behind his back like a first-class lecturer and paces across the stage. "You know, I thought you might turn up," he muses. "You were the one who told that reporter girl to ask those questions at the end of the interview, weren't you? I've just been laid off, thanks to you."

"Interesting," Megamind says again, bristling slightly at _that reporter girl_. "I would have said you were laid off for going public with half-finished research under the university's name. And—how did you build this, then? How did you pay for the materials, the machining?"

Anderson shrugs. "Sold my father's yacht. Not like he ever used it, anyway."

Megamind blinks, frowns. That…almost certainly has to be sarcasm, right?

There are entirely too many shades of gray here for his liking. Anderson has probably spent his last cent building a machine that he hopes will save energy the world over, someday. He's arrogant and obnoxious, but he is trying to do good.

_What does that make me?_

"I respect ingenuity," Megamind tells him, "but you _truly do_ need to shut it off. Now, before it gets any hotter. It's all wrong."

He had thought to ask about funding, but not, regrettably, about how Anderson actually managed to construct his machine. It took Megamind three months and several hundred brainbots to build his. One man, working alone for barely over a month, cannot build and maintain a reactor, even one as small as this. Maybe if he already had the parts, but…one man?

This is the thought that occurs to Megamind when Anderson's gaze flicks to a point just behind him, right before something heavy smashes into the back of his head with a truly surprising amount of force. Stars burst behind his eyes and he staggers, catching the railing just in time to keep from tumbling off the balcony.

He braces himself against the rail and tries to stay standing, but he can't keep his feet—the room tilts abruptly and he pitches sideways and has to sit down hard with his back to the railing, still struggling not to lose consciousness. His vision is foggy and whirling and he can't focus, but he can just make out a large, dark shape standing over him.

The large, dark shape is wearing steel-toed boots. Megamind discovers this when one of them kicks him in the stomach. He curls reflexively, hissing, and then the other boot collides with the side of his head and the lights go out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thousands of brainbots means you can just sort of...HAVE a coral reef in your basement.


	9. Chapter 9

Megamind comes to with a splitting headache, a crick in his neck, and his hands tied above his head. He doesn't groan, although he wants to.

He lifts his head a little and blinks, trying to ignore the pain that comes with moving. Up close, he can see that the casing around the reactor core is made at least partially of what looks like triple-thick glass. That's not good. Decent radiation shielding, yes, but overall…not terribly effective at containing other, more violently damaging temperature or kinetic overloads.

He leans against his restraints, keeping his knees loose and turning slowly on his toes, hanging from his wrists. There's a little bit of slack, enough for him to work with, and he risks a glance upward. Manacles with a good length of chain between them, threaded through a large ring hanging from the ceiling. Excellent. Megamind is handy with a lockpick, and he always carries one or two tucked into a subtle sleeve in his left glove out of habit. It's a comfort thing.

Low voices nearby catch his attention and he quickly lowers his head.

"This was not part of the deal," Voice 1 mutters. It's a deep voice and gravelly, the kind that tends to belong to either the slightly congested or the hideously musclebound. "You said nobody would come snooping in this part of town. You said we'd go public last week. _You _said we'd be on easy street by now."

"I know, I know." Anderson sounds irritated. "There were a few problems with the machine. I had to be sure—it's a touchy process! A lot can go wrong, I _told _you. But we're up and running now, right? So tomorrow we call a press conference, bring them down here."

"Fine." Voice 1 is reluctant, sullen. Two steps away from being surly. "But what do we do about _him?_"

There's a pause, followed by a sigh. Megamind concentrates hard on looking unconscious. "I don't know. I just don't know. He wasn't supposed to come in until the end. You know, confirm my findings. I wish he'd fallen off the balcony when you hit him."

This is followed by another, longer pause.

Voice 1 breaks it. "We could just shoot him."

"We could." Anderson sounds like he's honestly considering it. "Might be easiest. Throw the body in the harbor. No, no," and now he sounds exasperated, "people would _miss _him. They'd look for him. Start asking questions. And the last thing I want is that reporter nosing around; you know she would."

Megamind holds very still, but starts flexing his wrist, trying to move the short length of wire tucked against his forearm up to his hand. With any luck, he'll look like he's just coming around and struggling because he's uncomfortable. He _is_ uncomfortable, but he can deal with that. Megamind is no stranger to physical discomfort.

"Looks like our guest is awake."

Well, no use pretending anymore. Megamind opens his eyes and hauls his feet under him, fixes Anderson with what he hopes is an arrogant stare. "Your village called," he says. "They want their idiot back. What is that, _glass?_ Why did you make the containment field out of _glass?_"

Anderson looks at him as if he's gone simple. "So I could see it."

"You don't have to _see it_," Megamind cries, gesturing as wildly as he can with his bound hands. "It's a fusion reactor! You should be monitoring it with _computers_, not your _eyes!_ How are you tracking the internal pressure? Not to mention the external oxidation!"

"Glass doesn't oxidize."

"But _palladium does_," Megamind nearly sobs at him. He cannot _abide _such blatant stupidity. "_Surmayye a'raasac_. There are not enough words in the English language to express how foolish this is. I give that thing four hours, tops, before it explodes. How long has it been orange like that?"

"A while."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Megamind rolls his eyes and shakes his head. Aha, he's got the wire in his hand now. _Excellent_. He sets to work on the lock as subtly as he can. Above his head is difficult, but he should be able to get it open without too much trouble.

He looks around the room as if searching for a way out, and his eye catches—something a little different in the shadows above the stage, a different shape crouched on one of the lighting scaffolds. He looks away, scans casually back over, and—

Blue eyes sear into his green ones. Roxanne.

He freezes.

Roxanne is here. Somehow.

Megamind looks at Anderson, who's pacing again. "You don't even have a proper catalyst in there, do you?" he asks, his tone scathing, hoping Anderson will take the bait and remain distracted. Anderson scoffs, but he's pacing away, currently, so Megamind glances quickly back up at Roxanne, who's showing him a gun, her eyebrows raised. Megamind isn't sure what that means, but hopefully… He moves one fingertip in a slow circle, then grips his chains in both hands.

"Look," Anderson says, turning around. His associate, who is twice as wide and half again as tall as the professor—_talk about stereotypical henchmen_, Megamind thinks—cracks his knuckles. "_I know _I've got it right. Maybe it's different from what you've envisioned, but there's more than one way to skin a cat, eh?"

Megamind shrugs, trying not to wince when it pulls on his shoulders. "Yes," he replies, dragging the syllable out as sarcastically as he can. "Yes, _of course _there is a chance you've figured out another way to do it!, But it is _infinitely small_ and exists only because _there's always a chance_."

Anderson steps forward and grabs him by the chin. Shocked, Megamind freezes. "If chance isn't in my favor, then stick to the _facts_," the professor hisses, and oops, Megamind was wrong, because Anderson's eyes are blazing with a fire that is more than dangerous. "You are my prisoner. And you are at my mercy. And you should not antagonize me, because there is _also _more than one way to skin an alien and I swear to god _I will_ find out what they are. _Those_," he snarls, and his fingers tighten enough to bruise a human, enough to make Megamind wince, "are _facts_."

"Not exactly," Megamind says, and there's a BANG and the ring he's hanging through shatters exactly the way he was hoping it would—Roxanne is brilliant, Roxanne understood him, Roxanne's sense of timing is impeccable—and Megamind throws his hands out to either side and twists as he brings them down, trying to get Anderson around behind his neck with the chain so he can drag the man off balance and hopefully grapple him.

But Anderson ducks, twists the other way, skips back and then, while Megamind is coming back around, he lunges forward, managing to land a pretty sharp punch in Megamind's solar plexus. Megamind doubles over, wheezing, instead of being able to finish the move the way he was hoping to.

Anderson slips free with a curse and reaches into his suit jacket, pulls out something dark and metal and horribly businesslike.

"Oh I wouldn't do that if I were you," Roxanne calls down from her perch in the lighting scaffold. She fires twice, striking the stage in front of Anderson's feet, kicking up splinters and making him leap away from Megamind. Megamind backs away, working the lock on his left hand with deft fingers.

"Here's a fact for you, _Professor _Anderson." There's a sound from the catwalk high above the stage. "You falsified your credentials. I just got off the phone with Metro U; they let you go after you decided to make your little 'discovery' public before publishing or peer review and they decided to dig a little more into your references."

Anderson snarls.

"So articulate," Roxanne purrs, and Megamind's gut clenches as Anderson fires blindly into the scaffolds. An ancient stage light plunges to earth with an almighty crash and an explosion of glass and plastic. "Missed me!" she calls as Megamind dives for Anderson with one hand free and his chain doubled up in his other fist.

He—son of a _bitch_, Anderson evades Megamind _again;_ goddamn but this human is slippery—Megamind whirls, lashes out and swings with his chain, gets Anderson around the leg and yanks it out from under him, but then he has to dodge Anderson's henchman. He does dodge, and he does slam the chain and then the heel of his hand into the henchman's nose, but then suddenly the henchman catches his chain, jerks him forward and spins him around and—

—shoves him right into Anderson's waiting arms. _Well, shit_.

The dark pistol's muzzle is cold under Megamind's chin.

* * *

Roxanne swears under her breath as Anderson turns in a slow, tight circle, Megamind clutched close against him, the matte black of the gun shining darkly against blue skin. "Akos, can you shoot?" she whispers. "My adrenaline is up now; my hands are shaking."

The cabbie is pale, but he nods and takes the firearm. "I can shoot. Mostly. I can hit the paper eleven times in a row, anyway."

"Okay." Roxanne swallows and does her best to ignore the little voice in the back of her head screaming about how dangerous this is they have _guns_ this isn't a _game_ this is _dangerous _what are you _doing_— "Okay, um…cover me, but if I'm within three feet of where you're aiming, please don't shoot. And don't shoot to kill. And if I get caught, use the other one like I showed you. And be careful; Anderson is a man who _will_ kill his hostage."

Akos nods, looking slightly ill.

"Show yourself," Anderson snarls from the stage below. "Whoever's in here—I want you to come out with your hands up!"

Roxanne grabs a flat grey box from the bag she and Akos carried in and unfolds it. It opens into a narrow sheet of metal, less than four feet long and rounded at both ends like a snowboard, with two slots in the middle. Roxanne slips her feet into the slots, locks them down—the matching boots she's wearing are Megamind's and they don't fit terribly well, but they're secure enough for now—and then digs in the bag for the black strip of cloth she'd brought. She'd had to cut up one of Megamind's capes, but it was an old one and in Minion's sewing box for mending anyway. She wraps the cloth around her head like a balaclava and ties it off; there's no sense being recognized if it isn't necessary.

Feet still firmly attached to the metal strip, she hops off the catwalk and lands in midair. There's enough metal in the room and in the walls of the old building that the strip can pick up on the natural magnetic fields—it's been a few years since Roxanne has gone snowboarding, but this should be like riding a bike.

Below her, Anderson and his henchman are still looking wildly around.

"Up here," Roxanne says, and Anderson looks up in blatant astonishment. Roxanne looks down and grins, forgetting for a moment that he can't see her mouth. "Hi," she sings, wiggling her fingers at them. She isn't a woman who does finger-wiggles, usually, but—big movements, big gestures when you're in costume like this. Keep your opponent's attention on your hands, not your face.

Megamind has his eyes on her again, staring at her like he's hungry, like he doesn't have a gun to his throat, good lord.

"Who the fuck are you?" Anderson exclaims, staring. The gun moves a little and Megamind's eyes narrow; Roxanne sees him plant his feet as she takes off on a slow glide, carving around the wall to get her bearings on the airboard. "Silver surfer wannabe?"

Roxanne winces. "Ooh, no, pop culture references need to be painstakingly accurate in hero-villain confrontations, and comparisons are _so_ embarrassing," she sighs. "Please. A flying metal snowboard does not a silver surfer make." She looks at Megamind and rolls her eyes expansively. "Can you believe this guy?"

He doesn't reply. One arm is twisted behind his back, but he brings his other hand up lizard-quick, stabbing up and back over his shoulder. At the same time, he tilts his head all the way back and turns it sideways, butting backwards into Anderson's chest. It makes his head pound and stars gather at the edges of his vision, but it also makes the human take a step back just as his gun goes off.

It's a near miss, but Megamind springs away without further injury as Anderson lets out a high-pitched scream and staggers, clutching his face with both hands. His gun goes flying into the first few rows of seats—good, one less thing to worry about. Roxanne catches sight of some bright piece of metal protruding from between the man's fingers just before she angles her airboard straight and leans her shoulder in.

Megamind raises his elbow as he leaps into the air and Roxanne catches his arm and pulls him aboard behind her—he has enough room to get one foot on the board with his arm through hers—but this throws the board off balance too much; Megamind has to jump off before they reach the catwalk. Anderson's henchman moves as if to catch him, but Akos fires twice and the henchman swears and scrambles away.

The gun Akos is using is a Smith & Wesson revolver, the only normal-looking weapon Roxanne was able find in Megamind's arsenal. It's a six-shooter, and they're five shots down.

"You go shut down the reactor," Roxanne says brusquely, wheeling in a tight circle on the magnetic fields rolling above the old theater seats near where Megamind is brushing himself off. "I'll take care of Anderson and the muscle."

Megamind nods once. "Be ready to get out of here in a hurry if you have to," he warns. "If I say go, go; don't wait for me."

"Don't be ridiculous," Roxanne snaps, and twists her torso around in a mid-air rendition of a helicopter kick in time to catch the henchman in the mouth with her airboard. He staggers back, dents the edge of the stage, but he doesn't stay down.

Megamind vaults onto the stage, sprints for the controls. The switchboard is almost insultingly small.

_Bang_. The henchman howls and clutches his foot. Roxanne zips upward, gaining altitude by the way she shifts her weight, her black-and-blue dressing gown fanning out around her. As far as last-minute costumes go, she could have done a lot worse—yes, it's a glorified bathrobe, but it is a _fancy_ glorified bathrobe. "Throw me the gun!" she cries.

"No good," Akos calls back. "That was six! Sorry!"

"_Throw me the gun_," Roxanne repeats, and Akos shrugs and tosses it to her as she zips past him. Below, Megamind is working frantically at the unfamiliar control panel, pulling levers and flicking switches and apparently completely unaware that Anderson is sneaking up behind him with blood streaming from one eye socket, face twisted with fury.

Gripping the revolver by the barrel, Roxanne angles the airboard at Anderson and buzzes around him on a cushion of magnetic field as she swings the gun around in a neat arc to connect smartly with his left temple.

He drops like a stone. Unfortunately, the shock of the collision causes Roxanne to overbalance in a way she wasn't expecting; she's able to direct where she falls but she does go tumbling head over heels up one of the aisles. The airboard folds back up as soon as it's jarred loose; it clatters to a stop some feet away.

Anderson's henchman makes a sound like an enraged bull and charges, but Roxanne knows Megamind. He has no reason to own any normal weaponry. If she's wrong, she can only hope that Akos will pull through with the other thing they brought with them, but if she's right…

She lifts herself on one elbow, takes careful aim. Squeezes the trigger.

_BANG_

The henchman goes down with a roar of pain, bleeding from his upper thigh. Roxanne springs to her feet and runs to him, kicks a knife out of his hand just as he gets it out of his belt. Then she has to jump away when he makes a grab for her ankle—and she trips, and falls over the edge of a seat with a strangled curse. The henchman sits up and lunges, and he gets her ankle this time; Roxanne kicks at his head as he drags her towards him. And then, without warning—_FOOM!_

The flash of blue light is bright enough to leave Roxanne blinking and half-blinded for a second. The hand around her ankle has gone slack, the big man fallen face down on the faded green carpet. When Roxanne finishes blinking the sunspots from her vision, she sees there's a large hole with smoking edges in the back of his shirt and a neat ring of burned, blistered skin underneath.

He's very still, but Roxanne smacks him on the side of the head with the butt of the revolver, just to make sure.

"Nicely done," Megamind says shortly when Roxanne appears at his shoulder.

"You think I need you to protect me?" But her tone sounds relieved, almost joking, and Megamind laughs in spite of himself.

"Yeah, yeah. What should we do about those two?" he asks, jerking his chin in Anderson's direction.

"Could just shoot them," Roxanne says quietly. "Throw their bodies in the harbor."

Megamind glances at her. "You heard all that."

"Don't you _ever _scare me like that again."

There's a brief silence while Megamind enters a few codes on a ten-key number pad. "Hah," he says. "Okay. We're good; I'm catalyzing a full coronal collapse. This shouldn't take long."

Roxanne looks over at Anderson. She's shaky from the adrenaline, but other than that she feels pretty okay about what just happened. It's not the first time she's faced down a villain, but still, she's a little surprised that she isn't…well, upset. At all. "We could use the lasers and the spikes."

"No, not the lasers and the spikes," Megamind murmurs, grinning. "Look, can you just…tie them up or something? I'm kind of busy, here."

"I found rope!" Akos calls, poking his head over the edge of the catwalk. "Lots of rope."

"Throw it down," Roxanne shouts back, and by the time the reactor fizzes dark, she has Anderson and his companion tied, with a tourniquet around the henchman's leg just in case. Sirens are wailing outside, coming closer.

Roxanne blinks. "Who called the police?"

"I called for an ambulance," Akos admits, emerging from behind one of the curtains. He's struggling to get his arm out of a silver-and-black bullet-shaped invention, also from Megamind's pile of rejects. The buckles strapping it to his arm seem to have gotten stuck. "But they might send police as well."

"That's not how the game is played," Megamind remarks as he comes over, but he doesn't sound at all upset about it. "Thanks. Here, allow me—that one's touchy, you have to pull it like this—" He grasps one of the straps firmly just behind the buckle and pulls hard. The buckle comes off in his hand, and the arm-gun crashes to the floor. "Well," he says after a moment of shocked silence. "Well, that's why I don't use this anymore."

Akos laughs weakly and rubs his arm, and then the doors fly open and he freezes. Megamind turns and raises his voice theatrically. "You're just in time, my good Mmm…people!"

* * *

Akos moves back into the shadows behind a ragged, dusty curtain, and nearly trips over something. He looks down, then picks the thing up and brushes it off. It's an old mask, a full-face comedy mask, wooden and intricately carved, its tragic partner probably long gone.

But the ribbons are still attached to either side, and Akos quickly fastens them behind his head. The mask is heavy, but it will keep him from being recognized, and that's all he really wants. He didn't ask to get dragged into any of this, exciting or not, but Roxanne had needed someone to drive her because Megamind took the invisible car. And she handed him an envelope of cash that will more than cover her fee for the last hour or so, as well as compensate him for the frankly insane day he's having. So. He'll call it good.

When he steps back out from behind the curtain in a cloud of dust and dead moths, Megamind has found a screwdriver somewhere and is busily taking apart the reactor's containment field, explaining to the police sergeant what the machine was intended to do and what it would actually have done. Anderson, still unconscious, is being handcuffed to a gurney. His henchman has already been carried out.

"Wait, so he's not technically a _villain_," the sergeant says slowly. "Just a severely misguided individual who wanted to help the city?"

"That's my understanding. Ow!" Megamind jumps a little and sticks his fingers in his mouth. "This bit'th thtill hot," he mumbles. He's crouching on top of the glass sphere with a screwdriver in one hand and what looks like an oven mitt in the other.

"He's a severely misguided individual with forged credentials and illegal funding."

The sergeant turns to be confronted by a woman in a black…is it a robe or a dress? whatever, it's lined with pale blue and her head is wrapped tightly in black cloth so that only her eyes are visible. She hands him a flash drive and a manila folder. "Here's everything I have on him. There's more, I'm not sure how much, but I can tell you with relative certainty that he has connections to the Chicago mob through his father. His last name wasn't always Anderson. It used to be Dreyson. Robert Dreyson, Junior."

The sergeant blinks. "This is Sonny Dreyson's kid?"

"I believe so."

He looks down at the envelope, then back up at the masked woman. "And you are?"

The woman's blue eyes wrinkle a bit at the corners and the cloth on her face moves—she's smiling. "Telling you that would rather defeat the purpose of the mask, wouldn't you say?" She looks over at Megamind as he clambers down from the sphere with the screwdriver stuck in the top of his boot like a knife.

He turns around and waves both his long hands towards the ceiling like a ground controller at the airport. "Heave away," he cries, and the small host of brainbots that apparently followed Akos' taxi lifts the glass shells away from the rapidly-cooling reactor core.

"Be that as it may," the sergeant says, "I do need your name."

Roxanne turns back to him. "Let's just say I'm a strong proponent of truth," she says, putting a smile in her eyes and an edge in her voice.

He looks at her for a moment, then shrugs and nods, sticks out his hand. The woman shakes it.

Then he watches as she turns away and goes over to stand beside the city's blue ex-supervillain. And takes his hand. And weaves their fingers together. Megamind looks down, startled, then back up at her face as he says something in an undertone. The woman shrugs but doesn't look at him.

Interesting. He'll remember that.

Shaking his head, he turns around and then nearly has a heart attack before he realizes that he's looking at a carved wooden mask. There's a dusty polo shirt underneath it, and khakis. "Hello," he says, badly shaken and trying to hide it. "Are you with them?"

The mask nods.

"And I'm from the paper," says a breathless voice. It belongs to a similarly breathless woman with a round, shining face and uneven teeth. "Hi, Cheerily Valdez, Metro Times, glad to meet you, glad to meet you. Did you get the young lady's name?"

The sergeant shrugs. "Said she was a 'strong proponent of truth.'"

"Truth, excellent, excellent. And you are?" She rounds on the wooden mask, grabs the wearer's hand and pumps it with enough vigor that the masked man has to use his other hand to hold his disguise in place.

"Uh."

"Come on, man, this is for the _paper_," Cheerily-Valdez-Metro-Times stresses. "You gotta give me something to work with! Are you a new hero, too? Were you just in the right place at the right time? Where'd you get that nifty mask?"

The masked man is blinking very rapidly. "Uhm," he says again. His voice is muffled. "I guess I'm a…strong proponent of…of justice?"

"Justice, justice, excellent!"

And before anyone really knows what's happening, Cheerily has the man in the wooden mask on Megamind's other side and all three of them turned around with the shell of the reactor in the background, and is snapping photos like mad.

"Thanks, thank you all so much!" It's like a mantra. Cheerily-Valdez-Metro-Times scurries away still chanting it.

"What is she going to do?" Megamind sounds worried, and Roxanne grimaces.

"I'll take care of it," she says, and flips open the silver airboard. "Cheery's overzealous but basically harmless. I'll talk to her. If you want to make your escape I won't blame you—I can try to get everybody to look at me, and Akos can show you the back way out." She glances over at him, then quickly away. "Kind of makes you wish you could still use smoke bombs, huh? Oh, speaking of hiding, there's a holowatch chip for you in my camera bag. Swing by my office later to pick it up."

Megamind nods silently, and Roxanne jumps into the air. "Nibs! Needles! Flash!" she shouts, and everyone looks up as a segmented metal brainbot and two newer ones with clear domes zoom over. Roxanne circles a bit higher, shoulders squared and head up. "Nice work today! Now stick with me, huh?" She looks down at the crowd as the trio falls into tight orbit around her, and Megamind can tell that she's meeting people's eyes. "Gotta make sure the news lady gets her facts straight," she says loudly, and winks, and there's a laugh.

_Presentation_. Roxanne is doing it right. God, he loves her. And as she soars away over the heads of the people gathered below to scattered applause, Megamind slips around behind the reactor and follows Akos into the shadows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cheerily's name used to be Peter, and then I forgot and gave Roxanne an ex-boyfriend named Peter. Whoops. So now Peter is a lady named Cheerily, and her name is Cheerily because I was like "what shall her name be" and both of my muses screamed CHEERILY at full blast for NO FREAKIN REASON and no amount of arguing or insisting that's a terrible name would change their minds. It's not my fault.
> 
> Anyway, so now we have Cheerily, who named herself that when she stopped being Peter, I guess.
> 
> And Akos. Poor Akos. He is having a Long Day.
> 
> Fun Fact: literally the only reason Megamind has a revolver is because I read the Evil Overlord's Handbook when I was a kid and one of my favorite rules was something like "I will have all of my weaponry modified to fire one more round than expected, because nothing is more irritating than the hero defeating you with basic math skills." That said, please don't play with guns! Do not point guns at people! There is not a whole lot of safety going on in this chapter! This chapter is an excellent example of what NOT to do and what attitudes NOT to have about firearms!


	10. Chapter 10

When Megamind gets home, he finds Minion has fallen into exhausted sleep on the bottom of the pool. Megamind wakes him just long enough to assure him that everything's fine and get him back into his suit where he'll be more comfortable. Then he helps Minion prop himself up against the wall and power back down.

That done, Megamind knows he should go to bed, too, but he also knows it's only a little past noon and he won't be able to fall asleep. So, since sleep is impossible, he heads upstairs to his drafting board in Main Storage.

He picks up the de-gun on the way. After the events of this morning, he's determined to have it on his person at all times.

He's flipping back through old blueprints, searching for ideas, something to keep himself busy, when he runs across the third draft of the completed harbor filter and his hands go still. At the bottom of the page is the chalk pencil sketch he did of Roxanne a lifetime ago. She's laughing. She's happy and she's smiling, and he remembers the day in the park, and his breath hitches before he can stop it, and then his hand on the page clenches and crumples the sketch, and he's crying.

Because she's gone. She came to help with Anderson, heaven knows why, but after what he did? No. She's gone. And he should be glad, really, because he did what he had to do but it was stupid and he knows it was stupid.

Why can he admit that _now_, when it's too late?

_Go find someone who loves you_, she said as she left him, and it's been rattling around in his head ever since. _Go find someone who_—

(She loved him. He knows this. She loved him once and now she doesn't, and Megamind should be relieved but all he feels is so, so tired.)

No. Enough. He turns to go back down the hall to his quarters; he's done for the day. Whether he'll be able to sleep or not, Megamind is going to bed. He cannot _deal _with anything but bed right now.

Then his phone beeps at him, and he looks at it and nearly cries again. He has a meeting in half an hour with the Technology and Change Management Department, never mind that it's Saturday. At least it shouldn't take too long. At least he can stop by the newsroom on his way home and pick up…whatever it is that Roxanne has for him.

This doing-good business is going to be the death of him.

* * *

Roxanne doesn't bother going home to change, just pulls off the makeshift balaclava and dressing gown and bundles them up together in her purse. The yoga pants she's wearing are dusty but overall clean and so is her shirt—short-sleeved but oh well—and they're both black, so all she really has to do is stop at the dollar store and pick up a pair of cheap black flats. It won't fool anyone up close, but she looks dressy enough from a distance to pass as business casual. She doesn't have any appointments today, and she tells Akos to just leave her at the store, then goes around back and unfolds the airboard. She needs some time to think, and she's beginning to really appreciate her new toy. No way she's giving it back to Megamind after this. He can make himself a new one if he wants one.

Sometimes she misses flying with Wayne. The airboard is different, but it's still _flying_.

She zips through downtown with the wind in her face and then carves her way up to the roof of her office building, where she lands well away from the edge to fold up her airboard while her phone rings and rings and finally goes silent in her purse.

Roxanne pulls it out to glance at her missed calls, and—oh, hey. It was Wayne. She sighs, then blinks as her phone lights up with a text.

_hey sorry to bother but SOS Mayday mayday need to talk ASAP!_

She frowns. She hasn't spoken to Wayne since she shouted at him in his hideout just before the Titan fiasco went down; she's meant to call him for a while so she can talk to him about what the _hell_ he was thinking, but...she's been too angry to figure out what to say or how to ask or any of it. 

But he did call to warn her about Megamind. And Wayne doesn't mayday over nothing.

_Oh, what the heck_, she thinks, and calls him.

He picks up on the first ring. "Roxie?"

She lets out a shaky breath. "Hey, Wayne. I did get your message."

"Message—oh, my voicemail! Cool, but did you get it in time?" He sounds worried. "I tried calling yesterday, too, but your phone was off and I wasn't sure if—"

"No, I didn't get it until earlier today. He already pulled his…stunt."

Wayne gusts a sigh into the phone. "Dangit, Roxie, I'm sorry. I should've just texted you. Or come and found you yesterday."

"What, and blow your cover? I was at work all day, you know that." There was a time when she would have gone to the edge of the building and sat down with her feet swinging off the roof, but Roxanne isn't so good with heights, anymore. The airboard is fine, but standing on something high up is another story. She leans against one of the fiberglass electrical boxes, instead.

"I've got a couple disguises—"

She cuts him off. "Wayne, I work for KCMP _News_. In a _newsroom_. Full of _cameras_. It's not your fault I didn't check my voicemail sooner."

"—yeah. Yeah. No, you're right. Still, I'm sorry." He sighs again. "So, uh, are—are you gonna talk to him about it? Or is it too late for that, or…?"

Ugh. She tilts her face up at the sky, eyes closed. "Yeah, I'm going to talk to him. I just can't fricking believe it." She pauses. "You're sure? He—he was trying to make me _hate_ him?"

"He seemed iffy on the other stuff but pretty enthusiastic on that point, so…yeah. And, uh. Roxie." Wayne sounds uncomfortable. "In, in the interest of not messing this up even further, I wanted to tell you that I _may_ have…exacerbated things? Somewhat? By, uh. By confirming his issues. To see if I was right about his issues."

She tips her head back down again, drops her chin to her chest. "Dammit, Wayne…"

"Yeah. Sorry."

"What were you _thinking?_"

"I wasn't," he says, his voice flat. "I only thought about that part like half an hour ago." He pauses for a second, then adds, "I'm kind of an asshole, sometimes, Roxie; you may have noticed this."

Roxanne groans but doesn't contradict him. "What happened."

He sighs. "He was saying, like, three things at once, and I was pretty sure I was picking up what he was putting down, but I wasn't a hundred percent on it, and I thought, _well, here's a way to get him to confirm_, so I was like, _hey, and you know this'll save you heartbreak in the long run 'cause it's not like Roxie'll want to be with you forever_—"

"Oh, my god," Roxanne exclaims, appalled. "Seriously? What the hell?"

"Pretty much."

(Deep breaths, deep breaths. This is just. This is just how things are, right now. Anger isn't going to change this part. It already happened.)

"Dammit, Wayne," she says again. "Okay. Well…thanks for the heads-up, I guess."

"I'm real sorry."

"I should hope so," she mutters.

There's a long pause while they both just sort of breathe into the phone, and then Wayne says. "I, uh. As long as I've got you here. I also wanna apologize about—the Titan thing. I—I could've done more."

"You could have done _anything_, you mean?" Roxanne snaps, before she can stop herself.

"…Yeah."

"_Yeah_," she echoes bitterly. "_Yeah_, he says. Well, _yeah_, Wayne, I sure fucking hope you're sorry, because we both could have _died_. We won because we got _lucky_. And _even then_, Megamind spent a week and a half in healing torpor in my apartment. And, and I know that's not your job anymore, but—but I—I was your _friend!_ and I _needed you!_ and you couldn't—" Roxanne bites the rest of that tirade off, but more words burst out before she can stop them. "And, and as long as I have _you_ here, I have to ask—_faking your death?_" She glares down at the flat roofing under her feet. "I—can you—you said, self-help books? The _library?_ I don't—if you wanted to quit your job, _fine_, god, but—_faking your death?_"

"It's…Roxie, it was…complicated. I just—"

"Complicated! It's quitting your _job!_ And even if it _was _complicated, even if it was! you didn't—you didn't even tell _me!_" she cries, shoving off the vent she's leaning on. "You could have at least told me! You know I would have supported you, I could have _helped!_ You were—you were one of my _best friends!_" She's not going to cry, she's not, she's _not_. "God, Wayne, we only pretended to date for _seven years!_"

"I know," he says quietly. "I know."

"Seven _years_, Wayne!" she exclaims. "_Seven!_ Sally told me I could call her 'Mom' if I wanted to! I stood with her and your father at your _funeral!_ God, we had—we had a _funeral_—I went home and I cried all afternoon and—I _missed_ you! I'm—" She cuts herself off before her heart can rise up and choke her. This isn't going to help anything. And she can talk to him about this later, because he isn't dead, because he's alive, because he faked his death. "Look, I'm. I'm sorry," she says, struggling. "I can't do this, I can't…talk to you about all this. I've got. Too much on my plate for that, right now, and god I don't _want _to be mad at you anymore but I…" She trails off, grits her teeth for a few seconds, bites her lips together until it hurts. "I need a _hug_," she finally says, and her stupid voice goes too high at the end.

There's a pause. "Can I give you a hug?"

"Yes please," she mumbles, angry at Megamind and angry at Wayne and angry at herself for being angry at Wayne and still wanting a fucking hug from him anyway. And angry at her mother for ruining a perfectly good conversation, and angry at—everybody, really. The world in general.

Her ears pop and she turns, already lifting her arms up out of habit. Wayne picks her up and holds her against his chest, seated sidesaddle on his forearm. His other hand is warm on her back, a familiar weight there. The world around them is absolutely still and silent; they're hyperaccelerated.

"Really very upset with you," Roxanne complains, scowling into the distance with her arms around his neck and tears in her eyes. He pats her back a few times, rubs up and down.

"That's fair," he says. "Totally fair, I get it."

She squeezes ineffectually. "But I am still so relieved you're not actually dead," she says. "We should talk, one of these days soon." She sighs. "Seriously, screw you. But. I do _want_ to understand."

His throat moves against her shoulder. "Hey, I'm—real glad to hear you say that, Roxie. I, I'm—thanks. You can stop by the Fortress anytime, you know; I'm pretty much always around. We'll talk. Cards on the table, open hand, I promise."

She nods, pats the back of his head a few times. "How are you doing?"

He shrugs a little. "Eh. I'm okay," he says. "I'm okay. Life is…kinda weird, at the moment? I'm…actually probably not very okay, but. I'm okay, you know? How are you, how's the little guy?"

"He is also 'probably not very okay,'" Roxanne sighs, and sits back on his arm so she can rub her eyes. "Are you _going_ to be okay?" she asks. Angry with him or not—and she is furious—she does care about him.

"I hope so," he says. "I'm…I hope so. I'm working through some stuff." He sighs, lifts his mouth into a smile that doesn't reach his eyes. "I missed you, too, for what that's worth. Are—Roxie, are you—are we still friends?"

She studies him for a moment, her hands on his shoulders. He looks incredibly worried, almost flinching. There are shadows under his eyes. The scar on his lower lip that he got as a baby is fully visible; he isn't even covering that up, anymore. "Yes," Roxanne finally says. "Yes, we're still friends." Wayne exhales and his shoulders drop. "I'm not done with you if you're not done with me."

He nods a few times, closes his eyes. "Good, yaaay," he says. "Thank you, god, thanks."

Roxanne swallows. "Wayne, is there a cliff's notes version of why…? I know you said you felt stuck, but there has to be more to it than that."

He glances at her, then drops his gaze. Finally, he says, "You know how I used to say, I always knew I was gonna be a hero?" Roxanne nods. "Well, I always knew because it's what everybody always said. As far back as I can remember.

"And when…when the whole world says, 'this your job'? When…when you're a kid, and then also when you're a teenager, and then even when you're an adult…when everybody, your parents and your teachers and your friends and, and cops and firemen, and everybody you care about, everybody you look up to, says…'Hey, this is _your job_. You have these powers, you have to use them; _this is your job_.'" He sighs, rounds his huge shoulders down, wilts around her a little. "You kinda wind up internalizing that, you know? It…it gets in your head. You believe it. Even if it's killing you. And the job itself," he adds, "oof. It does stuff to you, after a while. There's a reason most of us are in it 'til we die." His lips twist. "One way or another."

Roxanne swallows. "Okay, but Wayne, if you needed a break, you—you could have taken a break, you…" She trails off; he's shaking his head.

"It was never gonna stop, Roxie. It was never gonna stop." His hands are still as carefully gentle as they always are, but there's a quiet note in his voice now that she's not familiar with. "I mentioned it, a couple times. Time off, you know? Accept responsibility for the stuff I can't stop while I'm away and then get back to the daily grind? But everyone I talked to, every time I started thinking maybe I was worn-down or tired, they said, 'What do you mean? You have the world's best job! And you love it! You're so happy all the time!'" He huffs a mirthless sort of laugh. "And…and so I figured, okay, yeah. Yeah, best job in the world! I'm happy! I'm fine! It's all good.

"But then Metro Man Day happened. And, and it all just…hit me. I'm not okay. I'm _not_ fine. I'm…I'm _so tired_. And it's never going to stop, this—all this stuff, this is—you don't do all this for someone you think is gonna retire in the next five years, you know? A fifteen-story statue? A museum? A holiday? Seriously? And—and I just—

"And I thought—I need to get out, but—and I did think of, of some other ways I could go out, but—" He pauses, mouth open like he's searching for words, but then he suddenly snaps it shut and shakes his head hard. "No," he says, "no. You said let's not do this now, yeah? And that sounds cool to me. You got a lot on your plate, and I already talked too much. Let's not do this now. Yeah?"

She peers at him, now starting to be concerned in spite of herself. "You sure? Kind of sounds like you need to talk."

He laughs. Shakes his head again. "Nah," he says, "I'm fine, really. And you got enough to deal with. I'm not putting my bullshit on you, not right now." He sends her a crooked grin that at least looks genuine, if tired. "I'll be okay. No worries. Come on by the Fortress another time, we'll chat."

"Promise?" she asks, and he hesitates, still smiling a little. But finally he nods.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I promise."

So Roxanne swallows, nods back. Forces herself to relax a little. "Yeah," she echoes, "yeah. Another time, then." She sighs. "Well…thanks for the short version, anyway. I am still," she pokes him in the chest and glares up at him from her perch on his huge forearm, "_very upset_ about you making me think you were dead for like nine months, but…I'll get there."

His lips tug to the side. "Thanks, Roxie. I really appreciate you trying, I…you're a good friend. Feel better?" he adds. "Do you want down?"

At her nod, he lifts into the air and tilts forward, lowering his arm like a ramp so she can slide down over his wrist and onto her feet as he decelerates. The world comes screaming back, making Roxanne blink and Wayne clench his jaw.

"Thanks," she says, dusting herself off. "And I do appreciate _you_ telling me about what you said to Megamind."

Wayne grimaces again, rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, that was not my finest moment." He blinks down at her, then adds, "He really does love you. You know that. He really, really does."

Roxanne has to sigh. "I know," she says. "I love him, too." Then she scowls. "But if turns out we're wrong and he honestly only did this to protect me, I will kick his blue butt from here to Timbuktu."

Wayne laughs. "I will fully support you in your butt-kicking," he says, "in that instance." Then he says, "Oh! Hey, uh. Can you—do you like apricots?"

She blinks, thrown. "What?"

"Apricots. I wound up with—here. Just—here." He flickers and suddenly he's holding out a green farmer's market tray with some apricots in it. "They looked good and I got them but, uh, turns out I don't—I don't actually like apricots? At all. So, do you want these?"

"Okay," Roxanne says, slowly taking them. "Thanks."

"No problem. Thanks for calling, I really—thanks." Then he takes a deep breath, gusts it out with a whoosh too loud for his lungs as he lifts off the roof. "Hey, it was good to see you, Roxie," he says. "Don't be a stranger."

She smiles a little and nods again. Lifts her hand in a wave—and then her ears pop and he's vanished.

Roxanne shakes her head and then tucks the apricots into her huge purse on top of the roll of cloth from earlier. Then she hitches her purse higher on her shoulder to head over to the maintenance door, digging in the outside zipper pocket for the little roll of lockpicks Megamind hid there a week or so after she started officially dating him. All she wants to do right now is to go sit in the air conditioning and talk to someone she _isn't _angry at. Hopefully the office will let her do both of those things.

* * *

Jo jumps and looks up when Roxanne slams a folding chair down in her cubical and plops herself into it, her face in her hands. "Hey, girl, what are you doing?" she asks. "I thought you were going to take the whole weekend, for once."

Roxanne shakes her head without lifting it up. "I need to be here," she mumbles. "I'm not working, I didn't even sign in. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to move. I just want to sit here and cool off.

"Are you busy?" she adds. "Can I load-dump on you? Because oh boy, do I have some loads to dump."

Jo blinks, then leans back in her swivel chair and pulls her feet up under her. "Something happened. You got kidnapped? You had a fight? Is everything okay with…everything?"

Roxanne is quiet for a few seconds, just breathing. Then she says, "So, today I watched my boyfriend stab a man in the eye with a lockpick, I pistol-whipped an unconscious guy—oh, and I shot him in the leg, first—and I came to work on a flying snowboard. You know how I got in? Door on the roof of this building. Picked the lock. Maintenance staircase. _Ta-daaa_, here I am. Jazz hands." She does not actually do any jazz hands.

Jo frowns. "Go back to the pistol-whipping and the part where you _shot a man_." She reaches sideways to pick up her bowl of soup and pull it into her lap so she can finish eating her lunch.

Roxanne finally sighs and sits up. "It'll all be in the paper tomorrow, I think," she says. "Cheerily got the proverbial scoop on it. You remember I told you I was doing some research on that obnoxious Anderson guy from a month ago?"

"I remember you said his dad was in the Chicago mob and his report never passed peer review," Jo says slowly.

"Turns out he probably qualifies as a quasi-mad," Roxanne tells her, using the slang term for inventors gone awry who aren't dedicated enough to go full villain or hero over any particular cause. She proceeds to tell Jo everything else she was able to find out about Robert Anderson, as well as the full events of that morning.

"…So that's all of it," she finishes with a sigh. "I don't know what Akos did with the mask. I think he still has it. I feel really bad for dragging him into all that; I should send him a thank-you note or flowers or something."

Jo bites her lip. "I'm sorry," she says. "Rewind again? Go back to the part where you're fighting with Megamind? What happened there?"

Roxanne drops her face back down into her hands. "Oh lord," she mutters. "Right, so he…he made me think he was cheating on me so I would leave him. He also said something to me beforehand to make me think he was lying to me to get me to leave so I would be safe."

Jo stares at her for a moment. "Get out of town."

"I know."

There's a brief pause. Then, "You're not going _back _to him, are you?"

Roxanne bites her lip. "Well…"

Jo's jaw drops. "You are not _serious!_"

"I am serious," Roxanne says. "I know this isn't normal relationship stuff, but this isn't a normal relationship. He's—" She lowers her voice. The office tends to be pretty dead on the weekends, but she and Jo are hardly the only two there. "—He was a _supervillain_. He was raised in a _prison_. Jo, I kind of doubt he's had great examples to follow!"

"Great examples?" Jo echoes, stunned. "You're talking _multiple layers_ of lying, and this is on top of the Bernard thing."

"For which he has apologized profusely," Roxanne says. "My relationship, my standards, Jo. And he _wasn't _trying to get me to leave so that I would be safe. Wayne thinks—and Minion I agree—Megamind was just trying to beat me to the punch. He figures I'll leave him eventually, so he…decided to spare the both of us a lot of heartache and trouble and _make _me leave. He knew I'd figure out he wasn't really cheating—"

"How?" Jo asks, sounding exasperated. "How would you know?"

"I'd never find out about it, if he was."

Jo scowls and opens her mouth to argue, then closes it. "Okay," she admits. "Okay, yes. That's. That is definitely true." She sighs, then offers Roxanne her bowl and spoon. "Sinigang na baboy? You can finish if you want, I'm done."

Roxanne nods gratefully and takes the soup. Breakfast feels like it was ages ago, and she threw up everything there was to throw shortly after eating it. "From Tagpuan? That's your second bowl, isn't it." Their takeout portions are huge, so she isn't surprised when Jo grins ruefully and nods. "Excellent. Love their sinigang."

Jo makes a face. "It's good for cravings," she says. "They use too much sampalok. I always forget."

Roxanne rolls her eyes at her friend. "Well, _I_ like it," she says. Then she shrugs and returns to the topic at hand. "Anyway, he knew I'd figure it out and be pissed, but he wanted me to stay away, and…he guessed the easiest way to do that was make me hate him. And you know me, Jo," she says, talking around a mouthful of pork, "I'd hate anyone who dumped me because they thought it would be for my own good. Megamind knew that, too."

"But—"

"I've already decided," Roxanne sighs. "I'm just venting. And don't get me wrong," she adds, when Jo scowls at her, "I am still _seriously_ angry about this; I'm not brushing it off, I promise. I just." She swallows, staring down at the half-bowl of lukewarm soup in her hands. "I don't know. Call me an idiot, but…I love him. I want to keep him. And I'm willing to fight for what I want."

Jo studies her for a minute, then smiles a little. "He's in for a surprise, then," she says, "if you're going to bat for him."

"I just want him to _hear me!_" Roxanne exclaims. "And I don't know how to make that _happen!_ I think I do get where he's coming from, but…I mean, god, from what Minion says, he's also chronically sleep-deprived; _that's_ not doing him any favors." She explains about the caffeine, the circadian rhythms, Megamind's emotional reception. By the end of it, Jo is staring at her.

"But the caffeine keeps him awake as much as it keeps you awake?"

Roxanne nods. "Unless he's completely blissed out on it, yeah."

"That completely blows," Jo says flatly. "As a trade-off? That is totally awful." She pauses. "Can your brother maybe help?"

"I hope so," Roxanne says. "I'm definitely going to ask him about it. This is right up his alley." She sits up a little and stretches. "Thanks for letting me gripe about all this," she adds. "I really just…ugh, I need an outside perspective sometimes, you know?"

Jo snorts. "Not to sound totally selfish, but your life updates are the highlight of my week. You should have just gone with Tippy in Human Resources. Much less trouble."

Roxanne cocks her head. "You were serious about that? I didn't know she was…what, gay? Bi?"

"Bi. She said, at the holiday party last year."

"Huh. Yeah, I probably should have asked her out, then." She laughs ruefully. "Office romance would be a pain, but still less trouble than a goddamn ex-supervillain." Then she sighs, and her smile fades from amusement to fondness. "Less exciting, too, though."

"Ooooh," Jo says, eyeing her and grinning as she puts the empty bowl back on Jo's desk. "You got it bad this time."

Roxanne's ears go hot. "Well, so sue me! I mean, he _is_ exciting! I get home to a human partner and they're like, _hey, how was your day? What should we have for dinner?_ But I come home to Megamind; he's like, _hey, the brainbots caught a virus attacking their cerebrospinal substrate so I'm engineering a counter-virus; can you drink this and see if it gives you the runs? Oh, and did you have a good day?_" By the end of this, Jo is wheezing. "Not," Roxanne adds, laughing a little, herself, "that he's actually asked me to do that, or anything."

"You sound _just like him_," Jo giggles. "Your _voice_, oh my god. Ah. Hahaha." She sighs, wipes the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. "Ahh. I do have a question, though," she says, still grinning. "Who is Wayne?"

Roxanne freezes. "Uh. Wayne is. A friend of mine. From out of town."

Jo wrinkles her nose at her. "You can't lie, you know that. Who is he, really? He knows Megamind? _Knows _him-knows him?"

Roxanne bites her lips together and raises her eyebrows at her friend.

"Come on. Come _onnnn_," Jo says. "Because the only Wayne I know who knows Megamind is Wayne _Scott_, and he's dead."

Roxanne looks up at Jo with her lips still pinched between her teeth, nodding, eyebrows up. Jo frowns at her in confusion, but Roxanne keeps nodding. After a second or so, she lifts a finger, taps it vertically against her mouth in a _shhhh_ gesture.

It takes a moment, but Jo's eyes go wide. "_No_."

Roxanne keeps nodding.

Jo stands up and hops up on her swivel chair to meerkat around—Roxanne quickly leans forward and grabs the seat of the chair so it doesn't turn—then drops back down again and leans forward.

"You. are. _kidding. me_," Jo hisses.

Roxanne shakes her head.

"He's _alive?_" Jo whispers. "How long have you known?"

"A little over a month," Roxanne says quietly, "right before Titan."

Jo blinks and her wide-eyed stare turns confused for a moment. "_Before_—wait, then—but then why didn't he—?"

Roxanne sighs and shakes her head. "He…had a nervous breakdown," she says. "Bit off more than he could chew, I guess." There, that seems…reasonably true? She doesn't know it _isn't _true. And it makes Jo's eyes get big again, makes her cover her mouth.

"_Oh_," she says, in a different voice. Then she frowns a little. "So…do you think maybe your new man is having a similar problem? Biting more than he can chew?"

Roxanne sighs. "It's possible," she admits. She's been wondering something along those lines. Megamind is under a ton of stress, right now, with his new responsibilities. Even just with figuring out what his new responsibilities _are_. "His whole life is upside down. But it's like I told Minion, I don't mind working on things, I just…I want to have the chance to make this work, you know?"

Jo smiles, pats her knee. "I know. You got this, girl. You—"

Roxanne's phone beeps, one cubicle over. "Roxanne? You, um…you have a visitor who insists you're in the office."

"Crap," Roxanne mutters, and ducks over to her cube. "Hey, Verna, yeah, I'm here. Fluffy-haired guy, glasses, square jaw? Green eyes?"

"Oh," the receptionist says, sounding startled. "Oh, you are here! Um—green eyes yes, hair…not so much, no."

Roxanne heaves a sigh. "Dammit, Megamind," she mumbles. "Okay, I'll be down in a minute." She hangs up. "Anyway," she calls around the cube wall to Jo as she digs in her camera bag for the holowatch chip, which is currently disguised as a flash drive on a lanyard, "thanks again for listening. I need to go give Megamind this chip and then I think I'm going home and taking another shower. Or something. I don't even know anymore."

Jo appears, stretching her arms over her head as Roxanne straightens back up with the lanyard in hand. "You want me to come with? Provide a distraction?"

Roxanne shrugs. "Sure, if you want to."

"You mind if I talk to him? About all this?"

Roxanne hesitates, then slowly says, "About this, yes. I do mind. I think this needs to be between him and me."

Jo cocks her head. "What about in general?"

"In general, I think he probably could use more friends." Roxanne sends her friend a tired smile. "So if you want to try and be friends with him, be my guest. Do you still text with Minion?"

"Sometimes! We trade recipes," Jo says, following her over to the elevator. "Recipes and cat gifs."

* * *

In the lobby, Roxanne has to bite her tongue and wear a professional smile as she walks over to where Megamind is hovering twitchily by the front desk. "Megamind," she says, extending a hand to shake. "So good to see you. I have the information you requested," offering him the flash drive. "I think that's everything, yes? Case closed?"

Slowly, he takes the drive from her, slipping a folded piece of paper into her fingers as he does so. "Case closed, Miss Ritchi," he agrees quietly, with a very brittle smile. "Thank you for your assistance. I…doubt I'll be troubling you in the future."

Roxanne feels her own smile go hard. "Oh?" she says coolly. "Won't that be a change." Megamind flushes and looks away. "I might need to trouble you, though. I have some thoughts," she says, "about our last conversation that I'd like to run by you."

"You referenced Shakespeare, once, when we spoke," Megamind says, and Roxanne blinks at the total lack of segue. "I don't suppose you're familiar with any of his sonnets?"

She is, as it happens, fully able to scream the entirety of _let me not to the marriage of true minds_ in his face right here and now, because she has an excellent memory, particularly for things that rhyme. But she isn't going to do that, no matter how appropriate it might feel. What she does is say, very coldly now, as she turns away, "I don't go in for poetry, Megamind." It's a lie, and both of them know it. "I'll be seeing you."

Jo hops forward as Roxanne heads back toward the elevator, and Megamind eyes her tiredly. "Going to put me through some shit?" he asks, and manages to look somewhat surprised when she shakes her head.

"Nah," Jo says. "Going to ask if you want to get coffee on Monday and chat for a bit. I'm usually at Joe's Joe around ten AM, if you aren't busy."

Megamind studies her for a few seconds. Then he shrugs. "I am busy," he says, "but I think I'd rather talk to you than them, so: meeting at ten with Jo at Joe's Joe." His mouth curls into something that's trying to be a smile. "I should be able to remember that."

Jo nods, then darts forward and folds him into a fierce hug before skipping back again and waving as she turns to go after Roxanne. "See you there," she calls over her shoulder. "Ten o'clock! We'll chat! Bring Minion if you want to! Bye!"

Megamind stares after her, bewildered, then shakes his head and puts Roxanne's holowatch chip in his pocket. "Thank you for your time," he says to Verna, who blinks after him, wondering what on earth _that_ was all about.

* * *

"So," Jo says, waiting for the elevator, "you going home, now?"

Roxanne nods. She'll hang around in the lobby for another couple minutes and let Megamind get a safe distance away, but then…yes. It's time to head home. She wants another shower to clean off the salt from the reef pool and from sweating, and she wants to think; the walk home will be good for thinking and the shower will be good for clearing her head.

"Okay." Jo peers at her for a moment, then tugs her into a hug similar to the one she just gave Megamind. "Good luck. Fingers crossed for you, okay? And give Minion a hug from me."

Roxanne smiles a little as the elevator doors open. "Will do. Thanks, Jo."

She's all the way outside when she remembers the paper Megamind handed her. She pulls it out of her pocket and looks at it.

It has ragged edges, probably torn from some notebook or other. The piece facing her is covered with lines of what look like spidery Chinese characters. They are small and precise, and sort of pretty if only because she can't actually read them. It could just be a grocery list.

Her first thought is to just throw it into the wind. But she resists the urge, and tells herself it's because she doesn't want to litter. Not because she's curious. Not because Megamind asked her to read it.

Finally she unfolds it. The words on the other side are English, written in the same spidery hand.

It isn't a sonnet she's familiar with, but after reading through it once, she can sort of see why Megamind handed it to her. The first half is just a formality, really—she's willing to bet a few dollars that all he really wanted her to read was the last six lines.

_When I have seen such interchange of state, / Or state itself confounded to decay, / Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, / That time will come and take my love away._

_This thought is as a death, which cannot choose / But weep to have that which it fears to lose._

Roxanne sighs and rubs a hand over her face. Then she shoves the paper in her purse and starts walking. She needs to think.

What is this? What is—why would he give her this? If he's still under the impression she hates him, still under the impression she fell for his plan, why would he want her to read this? Is this him trying to tip her off to what's really going on in his head? Is this an apology? An explanation? It sounds closer to the headspace Wayne described in his voicemail than the lie it seemed Megamind wanted Roxanne to infer; is—is that a good sign? Is Megamind actually aware that what he's doing is several flavors of messed up? _What is this?_

…_I should have just shouted 'let me not to the marriage of true minds,'_ Roxanne thinks, disgruntled. Love is an ever-fixed mark which looks on tempests and is never shaken—Love is _not Time's fool_—goddammit—Love alters _not_ with Time's brief hours and weeks! but bears it out! even to the edge of doom! You _asshole!_

Ugh.

She really isn't wearing the right shoes for a long walk like this, but it's whatever; she has her airboard. If her feet start to hurt, she can change back into the boots and just fly the rest of the way home. She hitches her purse up on her shoulder and marches on, lost in thought.

Not for the first time, she considers just going home and never going back to Evil Lair. But that's her rage talking, she knows. She would be justified, and part of her feels like it would be no more than Megamind deserves. He wanted her gone? Fine. She's gone. But that's not what Roxanne wants! And Megamind really has been under an unimaginable amount of stress, recently, and he truly has no idea what to do with someone caring about him. No reason to believe she'll continue to care about him. And Roxanne can understand that.

Distant bowging reaches her ears and she looks up, sees a small host of brainbots zipping along the street overhead. She steps into the lee of a blue mailbox and sticks her pinkies in her mouth, whistles sharply before she can think about what she's doing.

She whistles _attention! mark me!_ so they halt and spin in the air and look down at her, and then she whistles _to me!_ and points with her whole arm at the one whose markings she recognizes before flipping her hand over, palm up.

She leaves her arm extended so Lace whirrs down onto her palm, folding its zygodactyl arms down under its body on her hand as if coming in for a landing there like a bird, and then Roxanne slowly pulls the hovering bot in toward her chest so she can rub her other hand affectionately over its dome. Other humans are turning to look as they walk past, but screw them; if they're surprised Roxanne knows signal whistles for Megamind's bots, they haven't been paying attention.

"Hey, Lace," Roxanne whispers, staring into Lace's single scarlet eye. Lace's run is slightly smaller than most of the rest of the Host, designed for speed and tight maneuvers. Their personalities tend to be surprisingly placid. "You busy? Keep me company?" Lace blinks three times, a sign it doesn't understand, so Roxanne holds up two fingers and says, "Choose. Two choices. First choice: Follow previous directive. Second choice: Follow Roxanne Ritchi. One additional consideration: Priority of previous directive."

There's a pause while Lace considers this, and then it sort of vibrates against her palm and hunkers there, blinks once at her. It's decided.

"Good," Roxanne whispers, and pats the bot's dome again, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. "Keep me company." She strokes gentle fingers along Lace's blunt claws, which twitch at her, and glances at the segmented tentacle it uses for balance and grasping and sensory input, which is currently looped loosely over and around her wrist. Lace's particular tendril is bifurcated along its last six inches or so. "Sit on my shoulder?" she asks, turning her arm a little.

Lace sidles sideways up her arm on its bent wrists to perch comfortably on Roxanne's shoulder, winding its shining steel tentacle down her arm for balance. Roxanne has seen the bots crush metal with these prehensile limbs, but Lace only curls the bifurcated end of it around and into Roxanne's palm, seeking contact, asking for cuddles.

"Good," Roxanne says again, touched. The ends of those tentacles are riddled with tactile sensors. "That's such a good bot. _Such_ a good bot." She gently squeezes the ends of the brainbot's tentacle and reaches up with her other hand to drum her fingertips gently on the side of the carapace under the dome, just above Lace's jaw-hinge. Lace clatters its hinge at her, leans sideways to nibble delicately at Roxanne's earlobe with the side of its jaws, and she chuckles. "Come on," she says, and she turns to continue on her way home, hand-in-tentacle with the cyborg cooing quietly to itself on her shoulder.

* * *

Lace is perched on the back of her sofa when she gets out of the shower a few hours later, even though Roxanne left her balcony doors open in case the bot wanted to leave. Another of its run is perching with it there, its domecore flickering slightly, its lightning a little bit greener than most.

"Terra?" Roxanne asks cautiously, and the green-flickering bot whirrs a loud affirmative at her. Roxanne smiles. "Hey, Terra," she says, approaching with the side of her hand out for the bot to explore with its sensory tentacle. It rubs over her for a moment, then coils up her forearm and tugs, demanding pats. Roxanne laughs in spite of herself and rubs both hands back and forth over the curved dome, drawing electricity toward her palms until the bot buzzes at her and uncurls its tentacle.

"How," Roxanne murmurs, as she slides onto her sofa and the two bots rub the sides of their eyestalks sleepily against her shoulders and the back of her head, "am I going to get your daddy to talk about all this."

She's tired, but it's best to sort things out tonight, probably, before anything else happens. But she wants it to be on her terms—catch Megamind off-balance, take him by surprise before he has a chance to think out what to say or how to say it. She's sure he's already thought of what he should and should not tell her, but she doesn't want to hear that; she wants to hear the truth.

And the quickest way to get him to say what he really thinks will be to blindside him. It's not nice, but she's thinking it will at least be more effective—he's probably going to be angry and defensive, and she'll need to get past that as quickly as possible.

She can't just walk in the door, either. That's not enough of a surprise; that would give Megamind too much time to think. It might only be a few seconds, but at the rate Megamind thinks, even a few seconds is too much. Poem notwithstanding, she really isn't sure he'll want to level with her about where his head is. Catching him by surprise is going to be the safest way forward, so…

An idea occurs to her. It isn't a very nice idea, but it might actually work.

She lifts a hand up to her shoulder so Lace can chew gently on the tips of her fingers with its curved steel beak. After a moment, Terra climbs forward onto Roxanne's other shoulder and curls its eyestalk under her chin, whirring gently.

"So," she says, rubbing her thumb against Lace's beak, rubbing her temple against the side of Terra's dome. "What do you two think about helping me test the Lair's security?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lace is named Lace for its fins, of course. Terra is named Terra because its lightning is blue and green, like Earth! Not all the brainbots have names, but these ones do. Also, I enjoy the fanon that brainbots are a combination of AI and brain tissue from dying animals that Megamind rescues/resurrects, so I'm rolling with that! I figure some might be pure AI, but these two particular bots contain pigeon brain tissue--pigeons are domestic animals, like dogs, and I love birds A LOT. The parrot I grew up with recently passed away, and I needed some bird-bots in my life. I've never owned pigeons (someday, someday), so Lace and Terra probably behave way more psittacine than columbidine. But oh, well. So, if you were thinking, "hey, these bots aren't acting like former doggos," you're right! That is because they were formerly birds.
> 
> Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter! This one was almost entirely re-written. Nothing was WRONG with the original, but it had some stuff that originally was building to a plot thing that I didn't wind up using. This focuses more on character development and I think it's stronger for it. 
> 
> Plus Lace and Terra weren't in the original, so this new version is CLEARLY superior.
> 
> PS: if any of y'all are in New Mexico and wanna get lunch or something, let me know! I'll be in that neck of the woods until 11/22!


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW sorry for disappearing on you guys!!! This chapter was SUPER HARD to edit, you'll see why. Lots of difficult stuff in here, and then it got long (hi, that's a pattern with me, you'll notice), but I think the extra time was worth it. Oh, and Mischief Is Its Own Reward consumed my brain for a month and a half, so there was that as well. Anyway, I'm still alive and I love you a lot! 
> 
> Onward!

Nine thirty at night, and the Lair is dark and cold. Megamind has completed the new database for the Technology and Change Management Department, and now he really is going to bed. This is much, much earlier than he usually turns in, but he's tired down to his bones. Maybe he'll even be able to sleep, for once.

He hopes so; if he doesn't sleep soon, he's afraid he might simply pass out. At least tomorrow is Sunday and his schedule is mostly clear. If he does pass out, he won't have to apologize to anyone.

He closes the door to his room with a soft click and leans his head back against it for a moment before lifting his hand to the clasp of his shoulder array. He rests the mantle on its form by the door, then crosses to the wardrobe to hang up his cape. He's about to close the wardrobe doors when a noise from behind catches his ear—a soughing rustle, the sound of silk on silk, of someone trying not to move.

He freezes, one hand creeping for his gun.

And he almost reaches it. The tips of his fingers touch it, and then it's torn out of his grasp and tossed to the side with a clatter, and there's a hand gripping the base of his neck from behind. Pain sears down his spine and he snaps to attention with a yelp as if he's been electrified.

"I would say I'm sorry for startling you," Roxanne's voice says, behind him, "but I'd be lying. You locked me out; I had a heck of a time getting in here even with Lace and Terra helping me. Your ventilation ducts are too narrow to crawl through."

He pulls his wrist to his lips. "Minion," he begins, but Roxanne's hand tightens painfully.

"Minion's not coming."

His blood runs cold. "What have you done to him?"

"...What makes you think I would _do _anything to Minion?" Roxanne asks. She sounds genuinely baffled.

Everyone else who's hated him has tried to hurt the things he loves. And Roxanne certainly has more cause to hate him than anyone else—that was the whole point of this disaster of a plan—and she's ambushed him in his room and grabbed him by the neck, so she definitely wants to make him pay. Still, Megamind hears the confusion in her voice and believes it. If she had hurt Minion, she would probably be gloating about it, and anyway she hadn't seemed openly vindictive earlier.

(But there was a crowd, earlier, and before that, Akos was there…some small, rational part of his mind recognizes that this is paranoid, and he hauls himself back from the brink of panic with an effort. It isn't easy.)

"What are you doing here?" He has to fight to keep his voice steady; there's fire shooting down his spine and up through the back of his skull. "Why did you come here?"

"I told you this afternoon: I have some thoughts about our last conversation." She shifts her weight, shifts her grip, and he winces. "But I'm interested to hear your thoughts on why the hell you're trying to drive me away, Megamind. I've got a few potential reasons in mind and I'm just dying to know which is correct."

"Let me go," he says.

"Megamind—"

"No, _seriously_." His voice sounds urgent and strained to his own ears. "Please. It _hurts_, you're haa_agghn!_" and he cuts off with a cry of pain when her hand stiffens.

Then suddenly he's free and he stumbles forward and whirls, cornered against his open wardrobe, almost falling backwards into it.

Roxanne stares at him, hand still upraised where she jerked it away from him, her eyes wide in shock. Megamind stares right back. He actually looks _afraid _of her.

He _is _afraid. His next words confirm it.

"You're unarmed," he says shakily, eyes flick-flicking up and down, looking for some fold or crease in her clothing that would give away a concealed weapon. "Why—why aren't you armed?"

Roxanne takes a small step back, reassessing. This is not going according to plan at all. The plan was to get the jump on him and demand answers, startle him, and that part went perfectly, but she wasn't expecting him to be scared of her. She _certainly_ wasn't intending to hurt him—she didn't mean to squeeze, but he'd caught her off-guard and she tensed. She's sort of surprised he didn't pull away to begin with.

Standing here, staring at him…hmm. Perhaps this was not the best approach.

She'll have to change tactics. "Megamind," she says, keeping her voice even. "What exactly did you think I came here to do?"

His green eyes are enormous and he's almost shrinking back into the wardrobe. "Payback?"

"_Pay_ba—" Roxanne gapes at him, stunned. "I want an explanation! _Answers_, that's all!" she exclaims. "And I knew you wouldn't give them to me straight! You think I'm here to make you _hurt?_"

"You grabbed me by the _neck!_" he says, wild-eyed. "What was I supposed to think?"

"From behind!" she protests. "It's not like I tried to strangle you!"

"That's _not better_," he begins, but pauses when Roxanne holds up both hands and shakes her head.

"Okay, time out. What is the deal with the back-of-the-neck thing? You mentioned once, it's sensitive, but I thought—wait, so, pressure? Not just friction? What—"

"Roxanne, _look at me_," he snarls, and good lord, he's shaking. "My head is huge and my neck is thin. _Do the math_."

She squints at him. "So it's some kind of weakness?"

He sleeks his elbows to his sides, defiant and glaring and scared. "Is that not what I _just said_."

Roxanne stares at him for a moment before nodding slowly. "Noted," she says, and then steps back, clenches her arms over her chest. "Now _tell me_ why you tried _so damn hard_ to drive me away."

Megamind looks at her and the way she's standing, then sighs and relaxes some. He's still extremely nervous, but she isn't making any aggressive moves and she sounds…calmer, now. And he doesn't actually detect any hatred coming from her, which is interesting and unexpected, but he's pretty sure it's accurate because he only took one dose of caffeine today and that's almost worn off. Mostly she just seems very, _very _angry, but…huh. Maybe she really did just come here to talk.

He may as well tell her what she wants to know. He's already lost everything. He owes her this much. And angry-Roxanne is still _Roxanne;_ Megamind can only be glad to see her, even if looking at her does hurt.

(And she held his hand, this afternoon, he remembers suddenly. She—realized he was in trouble, she came for him, and when it was over she took his hand and squeezed it before she left; is that—is that a good sign?)

(It doesn't matter what it's a sign of, he reminds himself firmly; this bridge is _burned;_ he knows it's burned; he laid the fuel and the accelerant and he lit it on fire himself.)

He swallows. "You already know I thought you and Wayne were a couple," he says, his voice low. "I always said that was why I kept coming after you. That is how the game _goes_, usually; it's almost universal." He takes a deep breath, maintains eye contact. "_I _would never have harmed you intentionally—I think you realized that early on—" Roxanne nods, "—but as soon as word that you and I were ever together gets out, it will start all over again." He swallows, shrugs hopelessly. "Any other supervillain, any _competent _supervillain, wouldn't hesitate to hurt or even kill you to get to me. Roxanne, I know you can handle yourself." He spreads his hands, apologetic. "Truly, I do. But as long as you still care about me, it's a valid point of concern—"

Her head snaps up. "It is _not_," she snaps, "a valid point of concern."

He raises his hands, palms out. "Please let me finish. That isn't the only reason."

For a moment, she looks like she's going to speak, but—then she settles back on her heels and just glares at him and waits. Megamind's expression is pained, but he's talking normally and he seems to have settled down somewhat. "On top of the whole safety issue, there's the fact that you have to hide us from your family and from the public. As long as you're with me, you'll have to sneak around if you want to have any normality at all.

"Now, _I'm fine_ with sneaking around," he continues when she starts to say something. "I've done little else my whole life! I'm used to it. But _you_ shouldn't have to hide anything!" His expression blows open and anguished. "You deserve to be with someone your parents will approve of, someone whose _existence_ doesn't constantly put you in _danger_, who has a, a normal job, who can—take you on—on trips around the world and—" he fumbles for a minute, waves a hand incoherently, "_cruises _and things, I don't know. Someone who can give you _children _someday, help you raise a family! Someone _normal_."

His lip curls, and Roxanne blinks again despite her rising rage. She's never known him to look or sound so very bitter. "And let's be real, it was only a matter of time before you realized all that for yourself. _Look_ at me, Roxanne. I'm a _fucking alien_."

There's more, of course, but that's where he stops. He can't continue. He can't.

"So, just FYI," Roxanne says, her voice shaking, "the whole 'you're in danger, you deserve better' rationale? All of that sounds like a handy cover-up for the last part. The part where I'm _obviously_ going to come to my senses and leave anyway, so it might as well be now. That's how that sounds."

Megamind flushes, doesn't deny it, but holds his ground, holds his eyebrows low and defensive.

Roxanne shakes her head. "Okay," she says, blinking furiously and struggling to keep from shouting in his face. "Let's—thank you. For explaining, thank you. But Megamind, I—do I get to have any say in this, at all?" His eyes narrow at her, wary, and she swallows everything she wants to scream at him. "Because—you are _wrong_, you are _so wrong about this_, and I—god, I still care about you, I just—I am _so angry_ and I don't think you even know _why!_ That first point?" she says. "That first point you made about why it's 'safer' for me to hate you is _completely out of touch with reality_."

Megamind was looking sort of startled, but now his expression drops back into a glare. "Roxanne, you are a target—"

"I know!" she cries, cutting him off. "But my feelings for you are _not_ putting me in danger from other villains! _Your feelings for me_ are!" She throws up her hands. "I can hate you, I can be angry with you, I can _actively want you dead_, but as long as _you_ care about _me?_ _That's _what makes me a target in that scenario you're worried about! The way I feel about you has zero impact on my safety!" She glares at him, then adds sharply, "And you are _smart enough to know that_."

Megamind drops his gaze.

"I thought so. So _don't_ _even start_." She's managing to keep from shouting, but only barely. "And—and don't I get a choice? Even if I would be safer without you, don't I get to decide if I would rather be with you than be safe?"

"I could not handle it if something happened to you," he says flatly, still not looking at her. "Roxanne, if you get hurt—because of me, I—"

"You're scared," she says, hands clenched at her sides, and he grimaces. "That's _normal!_ But you would feel the _same way_ if Minion got hurt because of you, and you aren't trying to drive him off!"

"He wouldn't _go_—"

"But I will? Is that it? But I will go," Roxanne snarls, stepping forward, "so you _might as well make me go now?_" Megamind's eyes flick to her and he blinks a few times, looking startled. Roxanne is fighting back tears, but she forges ahead, struggling to keep her voice even. "And as for the rest of it—Megamind, what the hell? Someone _normal?_ What—and you are really reaching with some of that, I mean, _cruises? Kids?_" She swallows hard. "I don't even—you didn't even ask me what I want out of this! God, and the parents thing? Me deserving to date someone my _parents_ approve of?" She makes an ugly scoffing noise in the back of her throat. "Megamind, _everyone deserves that._ But it doesn't always happen! Lots of people's parents don't approve of their partners!" She stares at him for a moment, but Megamind's expression doesn't change much, just pinches. He's looking away again, isn't meeting her eyes. Roxanne gulps and steadies her voice with an effort.

"I am not dating you for them," she says. "I'm dating you for me. If my parents don't approve, we will cross that bridge when we get there. For heaven's sake, I lied to them and everyone else for _seven years straight _about—about what I was doing with Wayne!" She shakes her head, incredulous. "Do you seriously think hiding _you_ is a dealbreaker for me?"

She stops and waits, staring at him.

"No," he finally murmurs.

"No. It isn't. But," she continues, scrubbing a wrist across her eyes, "but instead of talking to me about any of this, you…you made some _3-D movie_ to lie to me! To _trick me _into leaving! You didn't," she gulps hard, "you didn't even _ask_ me what I want out of this relationship! No. Instead of asking, instead of talking to me, you—you made me think I was _seeing _something that _wasn't even real_—you made me think you were _cheating_ on me! And I _know_ you are smart enough to have thought of everything I just said already.

"So—so really, Megamind, really. Let's hear what this was _really about_, shall we? This was all just so I wouldn't have the chance to get bored or tired or fed up or—or angry with you and leave you on my own. Yes? Do I have that right?"

Megamind stiffens, feels his expression scrunch down. Somehow, hearing her say it aloud is just that much worse. "That's correct. Yes."

Roxanne's eyes flash and she presses her lips together and spins around, stalks toward the door. Megamind's heart sinks and he closes his eyes—then wrenches them back open again to watch her go, resolute, feeling tears rise in his throat. He has no right to hide from the fact of her leaving.

But she reaches the door and stops. Laces both hands together on the top of her head and stands like that, staring at the door with her hands on her head and her hips cocked. The amount of rage pouring off her right now is concerning; Megamind can taste it from where he's standing, but—is she—she's not moving; she's—

She takes a deep breath and turns. Drops her arms. And stalks _back_.

"That," she snaps, in his space and stabbing a finger at his chest like a knife so he falls back a step, reeling in shock, "is _also bullshit_. And you know it. You _do_ know it, don't you."

It isn't a question, but he nods anyway, staring at her.

She pulls a shaky breath and swallows hard. "And Megamind, even if—god, even if none of that was the case. Even if you were correct on all points, this plan?" she says. "This plan to make me leave you? Is _so far beyond reason_ that I cannot get my head around it. You could have just broken up with me, but instead you—god! Just, the level of, of emotional manipulation involved is—staggering! Unbelievable! And the _arrogance_, Megamind, I—I—" She shakes her head wildly, taps her fingertips to her temples and mimes a sort of _mind-blown_ gesture. "It boggles my mind! You just—decided you knew better and made my choice _for_ me, oh, thanks _so fucking much_. And—but the thing is, _I know you!_ Not as well as I could, not as well as I want to, but _I know _you respect me more than this!" Her voice is trembling. "Megamind, you are—this—this is not like you! The insecurity, yes, okay, but—_cruelty?_ Because making me think you were cheating on me was _cruel_, Megamind," her voice cracks again but she keeps going, "it _was!_ And that. is. _deeply_ out of character, for you!

"So, so all I can think is…deliberate self-sabotage?" she asks. "Is _that _what this was? Far be it from me to psychoanalyze, but you _are_ literally trying to make me hate you!" she exclaims. "Not just leave you! _Hate _you! And," she scrubs a hand backwards through her short hair, "and you keep going on about _deserve;_ do you—do you think you _deserve _to be hated?"

That one sounds like a real question, and Megamind risks a reply. "That's…possible." Roxanne raises her eyebrows, jerks her head at him like she wants him to continue. "I hadn't considered it. But yes, given my…psychological profile and recent behavior, the way I think and the way I'm responding to the sudden changes in public opinion…" His eyes move back and forth a few times before he refocuses on her face. "I would say it is definitely possible. Likely, even."

Roxanne nods slowly, her lips still pressed together in a thin line. Megamind tenses. _This is it, this is where she walks away_—

"And that's why I'm still here."

—_What?_

He's pretty sure his heart just tripped on a beat. The world froze on its axis. Time stopped.

Roxanne still looks furious, and she still smells furious, and her voice is still heated and angry, but she's standing firm and she's still talking. "That's part of it, anyway. You may very well be off the deep end, Megamind, but you are still, somehow, self-aware enough to recognize all that and say it out loud.

"And I _know _why you're…the way you are. I know that, I get that, and that's the second reason why I'm still here. You have some pretty serious issues, but you're aware of them and I know you're—you _were_ working on them, or trying to. And I _do _know you respect me, and I also know it would be pretty goddamn shallow of me to leave just because you can be unstable sometimes." She pauses, then adds, "For that matter, it would also be pretty shallow of me to leave you because you're a, quote, '_fucking alien_,' as you so bluntly put it. And the third part…"

She trails off, then sighs and swallows. Asks, "Megamind, do _you want_ me to leave you?"

No. He doesn't. Never. He opens his mouth to say so but the word chokes him, so he just shakes his head hard, instead. No, god no, he doesn't want her to ever _ever_ go, but since when has the universe cared what Megamind wants?

Roxanne steps forward and lifts a hand towards him, and he takes a stumbling step back and nearly falls into his open wardrobe again. Roxanne pauses, waits for him to meet her gaze, and then closes the distance between them. Megamind allows her to slowly reach past him and place her hand lightly on the back of his head—he flinches badly, but he lets her do it—and allows her to carefully tug him forward—

—into a kiss. Her other hand rises to cup his jaw as she moves in.

Oh. This isn't what he thought she was—oh.

His hands clench by his sides, initially. And no, he couldn't resist, couldn't bring himself to stop her from kissing him, but he does try not to move or encourage her. She'll leave him eventually, won't she? Everyone leaves him eventually. He should—he should push her back. He should move away.

But she's being so _gentle_, now, and she's so soft. And if Megamind pushes her away now he will break in half. That's all there is to it. He cannot help this—cannot keep his hands from lifting to her waist, cannot keep his lips from parting, cannot keep his tongue from meeting hers. Cannot keep from pressing himself forward against her. He needs her like he needs to breathe, and she's still here, and she has her hands on his skin and she's kissing him, and he can't—he can't—

Very quietly, somewhere far in the back of his mind, a little voice whispers, _maybe this one is different. Maybe, just maybe, this one will stay_.

She breaks the kiss and Megamind stiffens, ready to jerk himself back, but Roxanne slides her arms around him and rounds her shoulders down so she can hide her face against his neck. Squeezes him hard.

"The third part is _I love you_, you stupid man," she mumbles into his chest. "And I don't want to stop. _Please_ don't push me away. I love you. And I'm stubborn."

Megamind chokes like he's been punched, clenches his teeth. Slowly puts his arms around her, slowly rests his trembling hands on her back and tries not to cry when she clenches both fists against him.

Roxanne squeezes him tight for a few more moments, and then she straightens and puts her hands on his shoulders, turning and guiding him backwards until Megamind hits his bed and sits with a startled intake of breath. She bends and slips an arm behind his knees to lift him the rest of the way onto the bed, and he stays where she puts him, frozen, while she sits next to him and undoes the buckles on his gloves, works them down his arms so she can set to work on his boots.

Megamind holds very still throughout all this, watching her, doing his best to restrain himself from grabbing her with both hands and hauling her into his arms and cleaving to her like an octopus. This isn't the first time she's helped him shed his outerwear, but he certainly wasn't expecting her to do so now. Or. Ever again, really. She's still here? She's still—

_What is she—_

She drops his second boot on the ground and then she slides back up his body and presses her whole warm self against him, and she kisses him _again_, presses him down. His arms come up around her and—oh, to hell with restraint; Megamind gives up and clings to her like a drowning man clings to a rocky outcrop: lost, confused, and out of breath, with his heart hammering like it's trying to escape from behind his ribs.

"Megamind," Roxanne says in a low voice when she breaks away this time. "I need you to say it. Do you want me to leave?"

"No," he says, staring up at her. "No, I—Roxanne, I want you, I want you to _stay_, but I—but someday—"

"If someday happens, it's in the future."

"But if—please just listen, if—this is the last time, or next time is the last time, or—" He gulps, heart shivering. "It's only going to hurt _more_."

"I love you," she tells him, bending to kiss him again. "Megamind, do I look like I'm about to break up with you? Right now? I care about you. I love you."

He drags his head up, presses his lips to the edge of her jaw, kisses her there twice. "I know," he finally says, sounding wrecked, dropping himself back down to the pillow. "I know. I know you do. I—I just—_how can you want this?_" He shakes his head at her, his eyes wild. "I—truly, Roxanne, I don't know what I can possibly offer you that you can't get with less heartache and hassle somewhere else! Every time I try to reason through it, I just—" He swallows hard. "The facts don't add _up_. I can't. I don't know why. I can't."

"Sweetheart, listen to me very carefully," Roxanne says. She's lying almost on top of him, her arms resting on either side of his with her hands wrapped around his shoulders. He's clenched both his hands in her shirt, and he knows he's staring at her but he can't seem to help it. "You _cannot reason through this_. I know it's tempting to try, but all the facts you can think of are against you because they _aren't facts_, they're all based on your perceptions of yourself and what you think I want. Megamind," she says, staring into his eyes, "you are so, _so_ smart, but you do not see yourself clearly. And you obviously have no idea what I want."

"Then what _do _you want?" He's almost begging. He has to know. He hates not knowing, hates it with a passion, and Roxanne is right—this is one thing he cannot figure out, because he knows he thought through _everything_, his plan should have _worked_, she cannot _possibly_ think he's worth all that, all this, but here she is. Incredibly, impossibly, against all reason, here she is, still. And he is _so_ _glad_. "Roxanne, I don't—_what do you want?_"

She gazes down at him, her heart in her throat, and lifts a hand to his face so she can run her fingers over the sharp lines of him—his nose, his lips, the angles of his cheekbones, his jaw. The twin sweeps of his eyelashes. She rubs her thumb over the point of his chin, smooths his soft goatee. The corners of her mouth turn up in a sad smile.

"You," she says, very very quietly, "just you, with me," and presses her lips to his forehead.

Her breath goes ragged a moment later and he realizes with a sort of belated shock that she's crying. "Rox_anne_," he protests. He cups her face in his hands and moves her so he can see her. She isn't crying hard, but her eyes are red and over-bright, and swimming, and as he watches, unable to speak, two more tears follow the first.

She looks at him and blinks a few times, sniffs hard and scowls down at him. "I just don't know how to _show _you that," she tells him, and draws a shuddery breath that goes straight to his heart. "I don't know how to make you understand that I want—my god, Megamind. I love you _so much_. What I can't get somewhere else—you! Obviously! I can't get _you _anywhere else. You're why I'm here. _You are what I want_."

"But I—I hurt you, lied again, I—"

"You were trying to protect yourself from getting hurt," Roxanne says, and whether she knows she's let her guard down or not, this is the first time Megamind can tell how much he's actually hurt her and not just made her mad. Her anger is beginning to fade, and the pain has probably been lurking behind the whole time—but anger, to Megamind, is sharp and burning enough to mask just about anything else. Including love, which is also starting to come through, now. "No one can fault you for that, least of all me. But the way you did it was _shitty_, and don't mistake me, I am still _pissed_ that you tried to trick me into leaving because you assumed I would anyway without even trying to talk to me about it.

"And I know," she continues, glaring at him, "I know you were desperate and you knew I'd try to dissuade you. That's not the _point_. The point is you evidently feel like you can't trust me enough to _talk _to me about whatever it is that's bothering you." She gulps and shakes her head. "You don't have to tell me every little thing, I promise you don't, but if you _can't _talk to me, something's wrong. I need you to _talk_ to me if you feel like I'm about to leave. _I will help_. Megamind, I love you. I love you and I love being with you and _I don't want to stop_."

He smiles shakily, still gazing at her face, and sifts his shaking fingers through her hair. "Well, when you put it like _that_."

Roxanne opens her mouth to speak as she shakes her head, still scowling—alarmed, he jerks his hands away, but this makes her stop and look at him and suddenly there are tears in her eyes again.

"I shouldn't have expected you to know this stuff already," she tells him, swallowing hard. "I really shouldn't. The only person who hasn't failed you so far is Minion. It's only natural for you to think I'll eventually leave you, too."

Slowly, Megamind moves a trembling hand to touch her hair again. "I—know you might not," he says softly. "I do know that. It's—it's like what you said before. I can…either accept that you do want to be with me for the time being, or I can continue to insist there's no possible way and eventually you'll take the hint and leave. I know that, Roxanne. Most…some of the time. I promise I do."

She stares at him. "Then _what is your problem?_"

He really isn't good at this. He's getting better about talking to people, but handling personal conflicts? He locks up.

Lock-up or no, he has to try. "See things my way," he begs. "If I treat this the way I treat _every _new situation—if I try to make predictions based off of prior experience—then that you'll leave is inevitable because _everyone does_." He breaks off for a moment to breathe, then reluctantly allows, "Okay, yes, Minion came back, and that one was—was my fault, really, but—"

"_Minion _left? When was this?"

Megamind shakes his head. "Never mind. It was my fault. The point is, I'm—I'm having trouble—even _thinking_ you might actually stay with me because most of my brain keeps yelling at me to just make you leave by any means necessary and get it over with. But believe me," he gives a short, bitter laugh, "I am well aware it isn't rational."

The bed is warm underneath him, warm where Roxanne is lying pressed up against him with her hands on him, with—with his hands on her. His life, all his life, has been so cold. Partly because that's how he likes it, ambient-temperature-wise, but partly…well. Big old abandoned power plant full of cold metal. Cold floors. Cold metal staircases, even if the spiral ones are fun. Cold at the prison, too. It helps him keep his guard up, helps him remember not to get too comfortable. But here, now, with her—this is warm.

It's a nice change. And terrifying, because he thinks he could get used to it.

He heaves a sigh. "It's easier when you're here with me, laughing at me and telling me I'm being stupid," he admits quietly, looking away. "Telling me all the ways I'm wrong about all this. When you're gone, it's hard for me to tell whether my 'facts' are based on my knowledge of you or if they're just…me being fatalistic again." He swallows. "I think it might get easier when we don't have to hide anymore. Until then, there will still be part of my mind that keeps saying, 'what if she prefers this.'

"And as unfair as it is that you should have to make some public declaration that you really do want me—and I do know it's unfair—I think that will be the easiest way. I'm sure there are other ways, but that's the only one I can think of, and," he gulps a little, "that means we'll have to put up with me being stupid for a few more months because I think we should wait at least until Christmas to go public."

"_Christmas?_" Roxanne sounds incredulous.

"Because there's a lot that happens around Christmas," Megamind says quickly. He's been thinking about this for a while; he's pretty sure he knows what Roxanne is going to say. "We'll be big news initially, but it will be forgotten so much more quickly than if you said something tomorrow. The scandal will be less. People won't be happy about you dating me no matter how much time passes and no matter what I do—no matter what either of us does. But maybe we can minimize the fallout if we time it right. Maybe."

Roxanne stares at him for a moment, then rolls off him. Megamind honestly feels like she takes his soul with her and—_oh god, oh god no, that was the last straw and she's had enough_—but she just lies on her back beside him and stares up at the ceiling. Megamind keeps still and listens to her breathe. He wants to grab her hand, but—he doesn't. He doesn't dare.

"Okay," Roxanne says quietly, after a minute that feels like an hour, and Megamind breathes. "Okay. Yes. That makes sense."

She turns her head to look at him. She isn't smiling, but she isn't glaring anymore, either. She just looks determined. "But I'm not putting up with you pulling stuff like this until Christmas. I tell you now, Megamind, and you'd better _listen up_, because this is important." She pauses, then says, very slowly and clearly, "_I need you to talk to me_. Because if you ever pull something _this_ _brainless_ again, that's it. I'm gone."

And after a long moment, Megamind nods. "I understand."

Roxanne swallows and rolls onto her side, facing him, as the last of her ire dissipates. "Is there anything I can do?" she asks. "To help?"

"I don't know," he admits, slowly moving so he can face her and bump their knees together. He's never done any of this before. "Maybe, can you…ask? Sometimes? How I'm doing?" His eyebrows tweak up, pleading. "I know I need to talk to you, but…I don't talk about my feelings. I don't bring them to Minion, I—mostly even try not to think about them, myself. So—and I _will_ _try_, Roxanne, I promise I will, but—can you ask?"

She nods, and Megamind swallows hard and tells himself to keep going because this, this was serious, this was very bad. And Roxanne wants to help, she said so. He has to ask. Has to talk to her.

"Also, I think—maybe—text me?" he says. "Just. Tell me you love me. When I can't see you? Please. I try not to cling," he wrinkles his nose, makes a face, "I don't want to be _clingy_, but…I think that could help. Reminders."

She studies him for a moment, then sends him a little smile and touches his face, brushes the backs of her fingers over his cheek. "Yeah," she murmurs. "Ask how you're doing, tell you I love you? I can do that. And I don't think that's clingy, love. I like hearing how you are. I like telling you I love you.

"I do, by the way," she adds. "Love you."

Megamind sighs and wraps his long fingers around her wrist, moves her hand from his face to his mouth, kisses her fingertips. "Yes," he whispers against her skin, closing his eyes. "Yes, you've said. Even though I'm—cruel to you."

"Hey." She scoots toward him. "Megamind, you aren't cruel. Your actions hurt me, this time, but—that wasn't your intent."

"It was, though," he says lowly. "I did it specifically to hurt you, Roxanne. To make you leave."

She blinks at him. "Apologize, then," she says, after a moment, "and I'll forgive you."

He swallows. "I am sorry," he says. "I'm—Roxanne, I—am sorry I hurt you, truly. I love you. I do want to keep you. I'm sorry."

"I forgive you," she tells him, stroking her hand up over the side of his cranium and pulling him into another kiss.

He angles sideways a little and sighs into her, returning the kiss as he always does, but when she pulls away he falls back and squints at her like this doesn't make sense. "Just like that," he says, sounding dubious, and Roxanne shrugs.

"Megamind, you aren't the only one whose brain occasionally gets the better of them, okay? And you've been…going through a lot, lately. I get that.

"Also, Minion and I were talking, this afternoon," she adds, "and he mentioned I seemed like I was pulling away, recently. At the time," she sighs, "I had no idea what he meant, but later, when I was thinking about everything…he was right." Megamind frowns and blinks at her, tilts his head, and she swallows, takes a deep breath. "I've been…stressed about work and worried about Bernard and I got short with you so I wouldn't have to worry about those things. That wasn't fair. And it probably played into your fears, and I'm sorry, too."

"You don't need to apologize," he begins, astonished, but Roxanne shakes her head.

"No, I do need to. I felt guilty about wanting to spend time with you when I had so much to do and the guy whose face you were wearing was lost somewhere…but instead of just telling you that, I told myself I was fine and got all weird and pissy at you, instead."

Megamind swallows. "Lying to yourself," he murmurs, sifting a hand into her hair again and scritching gently.

"Yeah," she admits, tipping her head to press into his gentle fingers. "I'm sorry. I…I'm not sure how to be better about that. I do want to be, I don't want to snap at you. But in the moment, I didn't even realize I was doing it."

Megamind blinks at her for a moment, studying her face. "Is there…anything I can do?"

She opens her mouth, then closes it and gulps a little, her eyes going bright.

"What?"

"I was—I was going to say—defend yourself, but—" She strokes her fingertips over his cheek, cups the side of his face in her hand again. "Learn to tell me when I'm being unfair? Tell me when I hurt you? Because—and please, please believe me—you _do not_ deserve it."

Megamind pauses, drops his gaze, and Roxanne's heart squeezes. "You can't believe that, can you," she whispers, and the way his face pinches answers that question. Roxanne presses her lips together, blinking hard, but—

His eyes snap back to her and his eyebrows come down, determined. "I can take your word for it," he says firmly. "I can do that until I do believe it."

Roxanne nods. Then she leans forward and kisses him again, making a quiet mental note to try to be more careful when she's stressed. Megamind isn't a partner who can just brush off or wave away an offhanded snappish comment—not yet, anyway—and the last thing Roxanne wants is to hurt him or make him think she's getting tired of him.

Megamind smiles a little and takes both her hands in his, tangles all their fingers together on the bed between where they're lying together. "Then," he says, "that just leaves the alien thing." She squeezes his hands and he sighs, frowns down at his blue against her skin. "I think I'm just going to have to work on that on my own," he admits. "Not sure there's much you can do to help me, there."

She's quiet. Long enough for Megamind to look back up at her and raise an eyebrow.

"Um," she says slowly, "I have…an idea about something that might help? I have an idea about where we could start."

He raises his other eyebrow. "Really," he says, still doubtful. "Where is that?"

Roxanne leans in and puts her hand to his jaw, tilts his chin away and presses her lips to the skin just under his ear. It's a spot she knows is sensitive, and sure enough, Megamind's whole body goes tense and he freezes.

"What—what are you—"

She pulls away, locks eyes with him. His expression looks bewildered, but not resistant. "Remember how, last time we had a serious talk like this, I said I thought physical contact might be a helpful thing for you?"

Megamind nods, his eyes searching her face.

"Well," Roxanne says slowly, and oh lord, she cannot believe she's about to say this. "Let's get physical? I want you," she says, and smooths a hand over his narrow chest. "I've wanted you for…a while, really. I don't expect you to believe me, but it's true." She smiles as best she can with how nervous she is about saying all this. She's been considering it privately for some time now, but actually talking about it is different. "I know we haven't gone terribly far yet, but…I would at least like to try. Sex, with you," she clarifies, because Megamind is still staring like he isn't sure he understands, "if you want to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit y'all, I edited this chapter so hard it became TWO chapters! Sexytimes in the next chapter but no plot, so feel free to skip it if sex isn't your thing.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes i disappeared for two months and i'm sorry but i come bearing porn (ha! a pun), enjoy <3

Megamind blinks a few times, his eyebrows halfway up his forehead. For a moment, Roxanne thinks he's going to refuse. Tell her no, it's too soon for me, we'll find a different way. Honestly, she won't blame him at all if he does.

But then he shuts his mouth with a snap and rolls over to face away from her, and puts a hand back over his shoulder to wordlessly tap a finger against the tab of the almost-invisible zipper running down the length of his spine. Roxanne laughs and scoots close enough to kiss the back of his neck, eliciting a startled gasp—oh, and isn't _that_ interesting?—and then pulls the tab down.

He turns back to her and takes a deep breath as she peels the leather shirt down over his arms and off, revealing the thin spandex beneath. Megamind watches her, his eyes roving over her face, waiting for—something, Roxanne isn't sure what, so she keeps her expression light and interested. The second zipper is hidden on the side of his leg; she gets his belt off and then tugs that down, too, urges his hips up so she can get him all the way down to just his undersuit.

Roxanne may spend more nights here than at home, but they haven't done much more in bed than just kiss, so far. _Lots _of kissing, granted, but Megamind hasn't seemed particularly eager to go much further than that and Roxanne has mostly been following his lead. Just kissing and cuddling is already nice, much nicer than sleeping alone, and the way Megamind holds her—always with both arms, always with both hands on her, always with his legs tangled in hers—makes Roxanne's heart crawl up into her throat when she thinks about it. If she scared him off by moving too quickly, she would cry _so hard_.

But heavy makeouts are heavy makeouts, so Roxanne already knows his neck is sensitive. She wasn't expecting the _back_ of his neck to be more sensitive than the front, but judging by his reaction when she kissed him there—and earlier when she caught him there—that's something she's going to need to explore in greater depth at some point.

For now, she kisses him until he tips his head up for a better angle and brings a hand up to her back, and then she presses under his chin with her thumb to keep his head back so she can move her lips to the soft skin at the top of his throat. He inhales sharply, then tilts his head even farther, so Roxanne draws a quick line down one of the tendons with her tongue and nips at the jut of a sharp clavicle. She trails her fingertips along his shoulder above his opposite collarbone, along the single pale line there, and he jerks and bites off a gasp.

"You're usually a little more active than this," she murmurs against his skin. "You okay? Sure you want to do this?"

He swallows, and she drops a quick kiss to his sharp adam's apple. "I want to, I'm just…"

"What?" He's lying very still, keeping his head back and his throat exposed. Roxanne puts her hand on his chin again and gently guides him to look at her, her other hand easing the back of his head up on the pillow. "Megamind. What?"

He blinks at her. "Just nervous," he says quietly, with a twitchy tiny smile. "And lucky. Unspeakably lucky."

Roxanne smiles at him and pets his facial hair with her thumb. "Wait here," she tells him. "I'll be right back."

She rolls over and hops off the bed, lighting the small lamp on what she's come to think of as 'her' nightstand, then goes around to light the one on Megamind's nightstand as well. He lifts himself up onto his elbows and watches her as she goes to turn off the overhead light.

The walls of Megamind's bedroom are black, as are the hangings around his bed, and the lamps are a fairly low wattage. They give enough light that Roxanne can see pretty well, but now she's gathered enough shadows to hopefully help Megamind feel a little more comfortable.

She crawls back up next to him. "Better?" she asks, and he reaches for her with one hand, lifting the other to brush her bangs to the side with the backs of his knuckles, his eyes dilated in the low light, flashing as they reflect the lamplight.

"Much better," he whispers, and draws her down for another deep kiss, shivering as she draws a tingling line from his ear down the side of his neck and out over the pale line on his shoulder again. His undersuit is scoop-necked, showing most of his clavicles and part of his sternum, more than enough for Roxanne to work with for now, in Megamind's opinion.

Evidently she disagrees, because she hooks her fingers in the collar and asks, "How _does_ this come off? I've been wondering." She hasn't actually seen him get changed yet; he usually does that in the bathroom when she stays the night.

"It stretches. Over my shoulders. But," he says, gulping a little, "wait? Wait a moment?" He reaches for her. "Can I…can I just…please, I…"

Roxanne pauses and nods, and Megamind takes a long, deep breath and wraps his arms up around her back and rolls over, his arms and hands like steel around her and his face hidden in the curve where her neck and shoulder meet. Roxanne puts her arms around him, too, one around the top of his narrow back and the other wrapping down to his waist.

"Thank you," Megamind mumbles, his voice muffled. "For staying. Thank you. I love you."

She…isn't sure how to respond to that. She settles for hugging him tighter and pushing her cheek against the smooth side of his head where his skin is almost the same temperature as hers. Eventually, she settles on, "I love you, too. Thank you for letting me stay."

His arms go even tighter, he tucks his head deeper into her shoulder, holds her in the comforting comfortable circle of his arms.

Roxanne holds him like that for a while, thinking. _Thank you for staying_, she thinks. Well. If all she needs to do is stay, she can do that. She's stubborn and she knows what she wants, and what she wants is Megamind. She wants the Lair, and the brainbots, and Minion, but more than anything she wants the shy, ridiculous creature in her arms, with his leather and his swagger and his Cheshire Cat grin, with his _thank you for staying_ and his flannel hazmat pajamas and his adorable slippers. It won't always be easy, but—well, they'll work on that. She can work with him on that. It's not like she's going to get tired of telling him she loves him. Text him more? Ask if he's okay? That's not a hardship.

_Tomorrow_, she thinks, _I should really talk to him about the rest of the conversation Minion and I had earlier_.

She presses a kiss to the side of his head and he hums a little in response. Roxanne decides that means it's probably okay to keep going.

She rubs a hand up his spine, trails a fingertip lightly up the back of his neck. Megamind twitches in her arms at that and she hears his breath catch, but he doesn't protest, so she strokes down with three fingertips and gently scratches sideways with all her nails, lots of little sideways scritches over and over and over, feeling Megamind's body jerk, feeling his hands clench and twitch between the mattress and her back. Until she finally sweeps her thumb _hard_ into the dip at the base of his skull, because that's when he actually moans and drags his head up, arching into her palm. Roxanne lifts her head to catch his mouth with hers, then, and stops moving her hand, just holds him gently there.

Huh, she thinks. Pressure as well as friction, confirmed. Okay.

"I'm so sorry about earlier," she murmurs when Megamind comes up for air and stares down at her, lips parted, huffing shivery shallow breaths as she gently brushes her thumb up and down. "You mentioned it was sensitive, but I didn't realize you meant like this. I wouldn't have grabbed you there if I knew."

He gulps, nods, presses into her palm again. "'m okay," he manages, and full-body shudders when she rubs her thumb in a slow quarter-circle. "No—no harm done."

Roxanne stares up at his eyes, delighted. His pupils are pinning with his ragged breathing, contracting and blowing wide, contracting again, and she moves her hand to the side of his face, touches his sharp cheekbone. "Are you doing that intentionally?"

He blinks a couple times. "What? Oh, the—the eyes thing. I—sorry, I can stop."

"No, don't," she quickly tells him, "don't stop, it's neat. Why do they…?"

He flashes his teeth in an embarrassed smile. "Ah…arousal? Emotional, physical. Not always a good thing, but it is semi-voluntary—I usually have better control than this, but—"

Roxanne grins and tugs him down for another kiss. "I like it," she murmurs. "You have such beautiful eyes."

Then she runs her fingertips down along the collar of his undersuit and raises her eyebrows at him in a question. He blinks again, and shakes himself—and nods, and they sort of—

Megamind rolls down as Roxanne rolls up and rises back onto her knees, tugging the neckline of his undersuit out as they move, stretching it down over Megamind's shoulders to peel it off over his arms and down to his waist so she can _finally_ see more of him, finally run her hands over the smooth skin of his chest.

The general shape of him has always been similar to what she's used to, although Megamind is wiry and thin where a human with his strength might have bulked up, but he has no navel or nipples she can see. Sharp collarbones, gently scalloped ribs just visible. His expanse of lovely blue skin is completely unmarred except for two straight scars—there's a raised, corded line in the hollow below his right collarbone and another just under the pectoral muscle on the same side, each easily four or five inches long. Roxanne's exploring fingers linger there, briefly, and she has to wonder how he got them, why they're different.

And there's…something about his ribs. Roxanne cocks her head, peers a little closer in the low light. He has more markings between some of them, similar to the two above his collarbones: pale lines, four on each side, following the lines of his ribs precisely. They look sort of like scars, too, but they seem almost symmetrical. Huh.

Megamind, for his part, is doing his best to simply lie still and let her look at him. Her gaze makes him feel shivery and apprehensive, but it's not bad, it's just—nobody ever looks at him. Not like this, not quietly like this, with gentle hands and soft eyes. Usually when people look at him for too long, it means bad things are about to happen. It means Megamind has held still long enough to get caught.

But this is Roxanne. If bad things were going to happen tonight, wouldn't they have happened already? Probably yes, he thinks. Probably all of the bad things were earlier, and even earlier wasn't so bad: just angry talking. Probably he's safe. He may not be sure how far she wants to go, but he's game to go wherever she wants. The touching is nice, and Roxanne's warm hands make his skin tingle where they pass.

He can't quite shake his worry about what she'll think when she sees his sex. He knows how things go for humans, and he knows he and Roxanne aren't totally compatible downstairs, and—is that a deal-breaker? Should he warn her? He should—he should warn her. Is she having second thoughts? She's just sitting there, studying him like she's reading a book, slowly running her hands over his chest and abdomen, his arms.

"What are these?" She traces along one of his sealed gill slits with a fingertip, and Megamind gasps as warmth blooms in his stomach. Roxanne yanks her hand back. "Oh—not good?"

His voice when he speaks is higher-pitched than he was hoping it would be. "No no, it's fine! I'm, I'm just…sensitive. There. Be…um, be careful with those, please?"

She cocks her head, puzzled but smiling a little. She strokes a finger slowly over the line again, grins when Megamind bites his lip and pins his eyes at her touch. "But what _are_ they?"

He looks at her like a deer in the headlights. "Do I have to answer? Right now?"

Roxanne blinks, and then her interested smile softens into fondness and she leans forward and settles herself down against him, tucks her warm warm body close against his side again. "No, you don't have to," she says, and kisses him so deeply his whole mind goes briefly blank, more pleasure curling and kindling in him, joining the hypersensitive tingling in his skin that lights as she reaches across him to brush her nails over the sealed gills on his other side. Roxanne licks past his lips until he opens his mouth under hers, until he finally lifts a hand to cup the back of her head, until he groans and arches his body towards her, stroking their tongues together.

His hand slips and he lets out a startled noise when she moves to brush her lips up the line of his jaw to his ear, and he hisses when she runs her hot tongue along the outer rim. Biting him gets a startled yelp, but then he sort of whines and tips his head to the side a little, offering. It didn't hurt; it just surprised him. She hasn't bitten him there before.

_He's being more vocal than usual_, Roxanne thinks, and her mouth curves into a smile against his skin. _Vocal is good._ She presses soft, open-mouthed kisses down his throat and then bites gently and licks along his collarbones again, making him jerk and cry out when she runs her tongue along one of the markings there—they have a different texture, smoother than the rest of him. Hopefully he explains what those are at some point, because they look a lot like the lines between his ribs and she is extremely curious.

But her attention keeps coming back to the way he still isn't touching her. Not really. He dropped his hand back down to his side when she moved, and he's lying…well, relatively still, except for the twitching. So she sits up and shrugs out of her shirt. It'll have to come off at some point, and Megamind hasn't been making any moves to remove it, so.

Megamind stares up at her, looking completely blindsided by this new development.

"Megamind," Roxanne says, settling back down at his side again, on top of his arm so he reflexively moves it behind her. "For heaven's sake, put your hands on me."

He lifts a hand and touches her face: her cheek, her lips, her throat. Slips his spindly fingers back into her short hair, smooths her bangs. His other hand comes up to her back, makes contact with the clasp of her bra—flinches away, then settles.

His voice comes out strangled. "Ah—can I—" The hand on her back twitches almost imperceptibly.

"Please do."

_Okay, that's promising_, she thinks as he flutters his fingers over the clasp for a moment before simply unhooking and removing it. _He did that one-handed. Hell, _I _can't do that one-handed, half the time_.

And a quieter, filthier part of her mind whispers, not for the first time, _I bet he's good with his hands_.

She hums a little as he pulls her bra off, and finally leans against him, skin-on-skin. He trails his right hand up the curve of her back, scratching lightly, and his left returns to cup her breast, squeeze briefly, palm at her nipple.

_Come on_, she thinks, _come _on_, I know you want to_. He tips his head further to the side and swallows hard when she comes back to his neck, and she licks her way up to his ear again, exhales hot against the damp line, and his hand on her breast finally clenches and he actually moans. She does, too, encouragingly.

But he pulls back and looks at her, so she pauses. "Are you okay?" she asks, and he startles.

"What? Yes, yes I'm fine, I'm. Very okay," he tells her shakily. "Super okay. The okayest. Are you?"

She smiles. "I'm better than okay," she confirms, and he relaxes a little. "Megamind, I do _want _you to touch me. I will tell you if something's wrong, I promise, but you don't have to worry."

He flushes, looks away. "Not _worried_," he mumbles, and she laughs.

"Oh," she says, "my mistake." Then she pulls away—his gaze snaps back to her—rises to her knees. Unties the drawstring at her waist. To his credit, he has kept one hand on her hip, and—his eyes flick from the drawstring to her chest to her face. He swallows. Hooks his thumb in her waistband.

"Go on, then," she says after a long moment during which neither of them moves.

He looks up at her. "You're sure about this."

Her eyes narrow. "Love. Think about who you're talking to." She wouldn't ask him for this if she wasn't sure.

His lips curve into a small smile. "Fair point," he murmurs, and tugs her pants down.

Roxanne wiggles out of both pants and underwear, and she's moving to lie back down when a long-fingered blue hand in the middle of her chest stops her. "Wait—?"

Startled, she sits back on her heels and looks back at him. "What?"

"Can I just…" His gaze moves slowly down her body, and she feels abruptly, unaccountably shy but lets him look. After a moment, he comes back up to her face, eyes shining, exhaling sharp quick breaths like laughter as he smiles. "_You_. You're just, you know. Beautiful." He trails his fingertips down her sternum as he dissolves into inarticulate gestures, blinking and smiling and totally disbelieving—then, smile growing wider, he gives her another swift once-over and manages something resembling a grin, one cool hand coming to rest on her thigh again.

"Hey, about that catsuit," he says unevenly. Roxanne snorts.

"Oh, shut up," she murmurs, and leans down to kiss him, feels him chuckling breathlessly into her mouth, feels him squeeze her leg.

He stops laughing when she wraps both hands in the bunched-up top of his suit and peels it the rest of the way off him. He lies very still, wide-eyed and trembling and feeling suddenly very cold as she blinks at his hips.

Roxanne looks back up at his face after a moment or so, and is unsurprised to discover that Megamind looks completely terrified. His hand on her leg has gone stiff.

"My, my species," he says, and almost cringes, "my species doesn't—didn't do penetrative sex, as far as I know; it's…I think it was more of a…contact? Thing?"

There isn't much between his legs that she can see, but the flat skin just above that bears an intricate, more or less triangular dappled pattern of spots and curving lines curling away from a vertical central stripe about half again as wide as her thumb that extends down and back between his legs. All of the markings there are dark-dark blue and sort of silvery and shiny, damp-looking, the skin between them flushing pinkish lavender. Roxanne is pretty sure she takes his meaning almost immediately.

He looks tentatively up at her, finds her studying him with a delighted expression on her face. He wasn't expecting that. She looks back at him, grinning, then lies back down at his side. "_God _you're gorgeous," she mutters into his ear, and he lets out a few more breaths of nervous laughter as she runs her hand over his smooth chest again.

"Clearly," he gasps, and her hand is crawling south, "clearly we are both _HAAa_—" He trails off into a choked-off cry as she presses her hand flat against his sex and twists slowly. Not hard; she isn't sure how sensitive he is and she doesn't want to hurt him, but she isn't feeling particularly shy anymore, either.

"You're lovely," she tells him, sitting up beside him and gazing down at his face with a smile. "Do you mind if I just…play with you for a while?"

Megamind swallows hard and strokes his palm gently over her thigh again. "No," he says. "I don't mind."

Moisture rises on the dark-blue glands as she touches him, though the rough-textured skin between them stays dry. Roxanne drags a fingertip in a gentle spiral towards the center of his sex and he twitches and gasps, and then she backtracks, draws another spiral out to the edges. His abdomen clenches and he releases a slow breath.

"I am a little bit lost, here," Roxanne murmurs as she strokes her fingers lightly over him, watching the way he moves. "You don't have nipples."

Megamind turns and blinks his eyes open at her, confused. "Is that—is tha-hat a problem?"

"Not really." She drags a fingernail lightly, so lightly, up the center line of his sex, and he whimpers through his nose and bites his lip as his hips jerk after her touch. "But they're sensitive, for some people. A safe bet to try when I'm not sure." As opposed to Megamind, who's just sort of a mystery.

"I do have nerve clusters on—nonfunctional mammary ridges in that general area—closest comparison is to Earth's monotremes—less—less highly-specialized but—_oh_—" This is when Roxanne takes a wild guess just based on his musculature and bends down to bite carefully at what _might_ be a slight irregularity toward the lower outside edge of his pectoral. Okay, so he does have nipples, then, just not like hers? Now that she has her mouth on it, she can tell there's definitely something there, but it's subtle.

Subtle, but Megamind makes some _very_ interesting noises when she licks over him there, and sucking on it makes his whole body jerk, his hand coming up to cradle the back of her head while he whimpers.

An idea strikes, and she sits up again to lean over him and put both hands on his chest while Megamind blinks at her, blushing all the way up his ears as she looks down at him. Then she brushes her thumbs _down_ over his nipples as she splays her fingers and strokes _up_ along each of the pale lines on his ribcage—and Megamind _spasms_, arches his back up like a bow to follow her hands and cries out a clear, fluting whistle that rises and breaks in the middle to rise and break again.

Roxanne freezes, staring down at him with her hands on his chest. Megamind freezes, too, panting. For a moment, they just stare at each other.

"Was…that okay?" Roxanne finally asks. "Was that a good noise, or did I hurt you?"

Megamind blinks a couple times, swallows. "No, I think—I think I was—surprised? Unprepared? Do it again and let's find out."

She does so, carefully, and he does cry out again, but in his regular voice this time. His hands flash up to grip her wrists. "Okay!" he says. "Okay, no—no it isn't pain but it is _very_—I don't—think I want any more of that right now."

Huh. Good to know. Still, the bird call was interesting; Roxanne wouldn't mind more of that part. She isn't sure she wants to ask about it right now, though; Megamind was already reluctant to talk about his ribs and that was definitely fear in his face when he let her see him fully nude. "So, we'll save the ribs for later, maybe, then," she offers, looking at him, and Megamind nods. Save the bird noises for later, too, Roxanne thinks.

"Besides," she adds aloud, settling onto her elbow at his side and sliding her hand back down over his belly, "I'm still curious about _this_," and Megamind gasps a little as she kisses up his throat, and he cries out again as she presses the heel of her hand down against his sex.

The texture of him is interesting: soft, and much slicker than he was when she first touched him a minute ago. But the slickness isn't—it isn't like hers; it doesn't run or drip even though it's layered a couple millimeters thick on the dark glands already; her hand is only a little bit wet when she pulls away to experimentally rub her fingers together. Water-wet, not sticky-wet, and the—gel? she doesn't want to say _slime_, it doesn't really feel slimy—it stays on the dark glands, shimmering like pools of water, while the flushed skin between the glands stays more or less dry.

"You're _slippery_," she says, delighted, petting him. "This is _neat_, I love it."

"Hap-happy to entertain," he chokes out. "_Ah_—"

Roxanne isn't sure what she was expecting to find down there, but she isn't disappointed. Megamind in the throes of pleasure is just about the sexiest thing she's ever seen, crying out and writhing for her, hissing and moaning under her hands as she runs her fingers over him. She pets the dark, slippery glands, traces along the flushed skin between them. She mouths at the lines on his ribs, his subtle nipples, as much of his flat expanse of cool blue skin as she can reach, learning his paths and how to move him until he's all but twisting under her, gasping for breath, his eyes wide.

Then she sort of rubs at the very edge of one of the clear pads of gel forming, trying to see if she can lift it up, and Megamind yelps and grabs her hand again.

"No no no those don't come off," he blurts. "Not yet, that—happens later. Sorry."

"Oh." She sits up and smooths the fingertips of her other hand over the place she accidentally hurt, rests her palm flat against him there. "Don't be sorry," she says, lifting his hand to her mouth and pressing her lips to his knuckles. "I'm glad you told me. I'm sorry, I should have asked."

"Quite all right," he tells her, his voice breathy. "That's—that's, no problem, that's. Okay. I—and I am—very much enjoying your initiative."

"You would tell me, though," Roxanne asks, suddenly worried, "if I was doing other things you didn't like?"

Megamind rolls his eyes at her. "Please," he says, clearly trying to scoff and mostly just sounding completely wrecked, instead, "I'm not a _total_ nincompoop."

"Hmm." She considers him for a moment, then smiles a little. "Okay. Well, should I kiss it? Make it better?"

Megamind blinks a few times, scrunches his face at her in bewilderment. Roxanne, who's still holding his hand, takes his long middle finger into her mouth and curls her tongue around it, raises her eyebrows at him. His pupils blow absolutely huge, then pin down again as he stares at her, panting.

"Um," he says. "I think—no? Not—not this—" He swallows hard, shakes his head a little. "Not this time."

She nods and smiles, then gives him his hand back. Her own is still pressed gently to his sex, and Megamind makes a soft, breathless sound and moves to trace along the line of her jaw with his trembling fingertips as he grinds his hips up against her palm. Roxanne cocks her head. She really isn't doing much to him at the moment, but he—is he—Megamind seems to be growing increasingly aroused. He blinks at her again, then gulps and sinks his teeth into his lip, his eyes going hazy as his hips twitch under her hand again.

_Oh_, she thinks. _Oh, right, pressure. And heat?_ It hasn't escaped her notice that Megamind's skin is cooler than her own; she noticed that ages ago. Cuddling with him at night is nice; Roxanne is a warm sleeper and tends to overheat easily.

Hmmm.

She rocks her hand against him, then rolls her palm. Megamind moans again and drops his shaking hand to her breast, brushes his thumb over the peak of her nipple, and she hums at him and goes back to work, trailing her fingers lightly over him.

The skin between his slippery glands is textured like fine-grit sandpaper, smooth and rasping softly under the pads of her fingers. Massaging lightly on either side of Megamind's central line makes him fall back, his lips parting, and the muscles in his abdomen clench with his ragged breathing as she drags the backs of her nails along the outer edges of him—slow, gentle, catching slightly on his raising pads of slickness. He twitches desperately—fuck, god—his skin, his hips, he needs more contact, he needs—he keeps his eyes on hers, his vision clearing and hazing over as his eyes pin—this is the first time anyone has touched him like this and it—it was already almost overwhelming, but this—

—eventually Megamind does manage to actually focus his vision to see how Roxanne is doing. She's keeping an eye on his face with a kind of intensely solemn curiosity, but when he finally catches her gaze again, she grins and sits up a little, lifts her hand away. He lets out a protesting whimper of disbelief, and she blinks and cocks her head—then lowers her hand again and presses the knuckles of two fingers between his legs and draws them _hard _up over the thickening pad of mucilage gathering along his ventral midline. Megamind's startled shout breaks into a falling whistle like a hunting hawk's as his hips buck into the warm pressure. Roxanne grins and her eyes light up, and he realizes—oh, she isn't messing around at random—she's been studying how he reacts; she knows his midline is more sensitive; she knew something like that would happen.

_Ah. Aha. Okay_, he thinks, and then he mostly stops thinking, because that's entirely too sexy for him to articulate. He gathers himself enough to lean up and tangle both hands in her hair, instead, and drags her down, twists his head to catch her lips. It's sort of an odd angle for a kiss, but that's the point.

Or maybe it isn't. There isn't really a point to this. All he knows is that Roxanne has been having fun toying with him for the past few minutes, and he's been more than happy to let her, but—

—fuck, a couple more like that and he'll—_oh_—Roxanne repeats the move as he kisses her and he—

"Wait, need to stop," Megamind gasps, finally shoving himself up onto his elbows, "wait a—just, let me—I want—"

"Of course," she says, pulling away a little to give him room to move as he sits up, "yes, what?"

He rolls over, carefully pushing her down against the rumpled comforter, and Roxanne lets him.

"My turn?" he asks, lips curving into a hopeful smile as she relaxes back against his pillows.

Roxanne raises her eyebrows, strokes both her hands down his sides. "Of course," she says. "We don't have to do this in turns, though; we could just..."

"Of course," he echoes, eyes darkening as she rubs along one of his gills and sends more pleasure singing through him, "but I let you play with me. And this is a game for two," he smirks at her, "and I want a turn."

She snorts, then cups his jaw and draws him down for a kiss. "Of course," she says again, dryly this time.

Megamind has seemed fairly hesitant up until now, content to follow her lead, but he appears to have lost his shyness; his demeanor changes completely as he rises over her. In the space of only a few seconds, Roxanne has gone from gazing down at his tortured face to staring up at him as he grins at her with burning eyes—_hunting hawk, indeed_, she thinks, startled and rather hopelessly aroused. She was aroused to begin with—watching Megamind writhe under her hands was something else, seriously—but his eyes have always been distinctive, and Roxanne was not lying earlier when she told him she wanted him, specifically. Now he holds himself over her on his elbow and slips an arm behind her neck, almost pillowing her head, but he turns his hand to curl over her shoulder. Roxanne has just enough time to register that this move has the added benefit of gently pinning her before Megamind is kissing her again, deeply, his tongue sweeping into her mouth.

Because the thing is, Roxanne isn't the only one who was learning things as she toyed with him, and Megamind has always been a quick study.

At first, he follows the same path she took. Her neck is sensitive, if not quite as sensitive as his; he compensates for the deficit by using his teeth a little more, nipping the way he already knows she likes. He keeps moving, holding himself over her. His fingers trace lines of cool fire over her skin as he bends his head to her breast, and then he's sucking, and she feels his teeth and whines, cracks an eye open long enough to see him glance up at her and lift an eyebrow. He rolls her other nipple between his fingers and she arches into his hands and mouth with a gasp.

Then the corner of his mouth rises into that old familiar smirk and he moves his hand lower, slides his palm up the inside of her thigh, his eyes on her face the whole time, and she gulps a little and parts her knees for him.

Roxanne already knows those long fingers of his are agile and incredibly strong, and she's been wondering about them for—for a lot longer than is probably appropriate, and now here she is, and there _he _is, but he's just sort of—fluttering them over her, and dipping a little bit but not far enough, and just being incredibly frustrating, really.

"This is good," he says, lips moving against her throat, her jaw, hand still moving between her legs, "yes?"

She arches her back again, trying to get him to slip, but he's being very careful. "_Yes_, that's _lovely_, but it would be nice if you would please _actually use your fingers_."

He kisses her ear, then lifts his head. "Oh, I thought that's what I was doing?"

She blinks at him, wondering _is he serious?_ and he grins, sends her one of his old evil smiles. She isn't sure which one it is but it _works_ for her, especially with his pupils blown as wide and dark as they are, and then he's coming down for another kiss and sinking two slender fingers deep into her and _oh_, oh okay, yes yes _yes_ he is _very _good with his hands. Inexperienced, certainly, but he's both enthusiastic and attentive, and that more than makes up for it.

He works on her for a while, just setting a gentle pace while she strokes her hands and fingernails over his back, his shoulders, his neck—his hand stutters on her and his voice cracks on a cry when she presses her thumb into the dip at the base of his skull and runs her fingernails up his neck at the same time. Roxanne is going to have to explore that in a lot more depth, but later, later, because then he rolls _his_ thumb over her clit and she twists her hips and whines at him. "Go," she chokes out, "you can go harder, a little—a little harder—_oh_—"

He sits up on his knees and runs his nails lightly over her skin with his free hand for a while, tracing shivery ticklish lines over her in the cool air, setting her whole body on fire by degrees while he keeps slowly fucking her with his fingers, his thumb on her clit. He changes the rhythm a few times, makes a couple adjustments; he's watching her face with his wide eyes and she can almost hear him taking notes about how she responds. Turnabout is fair play, after all.

And he's a biter, she finds when he curls back down again and presses his lips to her skin. Not just little nips, but actual biting; he puts his whole mouth on her and squeezes gently with his teeth, offering a firm counterpoint to the way her skin is tingling. She wasn't expecting that but she isn't about to complain. He's careful not to do it too hard, and when his mouth returns to her neck and the curve of her shoulder she can feel a change, knows he's being careful not to mark her. Not where anyone will see, anyway. It's pleasant, how carefully rough he's being with her.

Roxanne isn't really sure she's capable of forming words other than _yes_ and _please_ and _Megamind oh my god yes there faster please please please_—a coherent sentence is entirely out of the question by the time he lies back down at her side and kisses her mouth again, grinning when she moans into him—but she does her best to let him know how he's doing with the three fingers he has inside her.

(He's doing well, but even if he wasn't, she would be a mess—she's wanted him like this for—weeks now, at least—his arms around her, his skin—fuck, his hands, his mouth, god—oh god—)

She's whining and rolling her hips with his rhythm and just _ridiculously_ close when he stops moving. She doesn't mean to groan at him, does not mean to say, "Oh, come _on_, Megamind, _please_," it just kind of happens.

"Yes?" Megamind asks in her ear, breathless, almost laughing as she whimpers and rocks ineffectually against his hand. "You keep saying that; please what?"

"Don't _stop_," she complains at him, turning her head for another kiss and twisting on his motionless fingers. He pulls them almost all the way out, then presses slowly back in while she tries to thrust onto him, repeats this. Fuck, she can _hear_ how wet she is for him, that's— "Don't—you're doing _so well_—"

"Am I," he murmurs, eyes dancing. "Hm. But I think I can do better." And then he bends his fingers in a way he hasn't yet, crooks them and thrusts into her hard and _holy shit_, the angle of this is—not something Roxanne was aware he had figured out—and then he speeds up his rhythm and he puts his _thumb_ on her _clit_ again and oh god oh god oh god—

"Yes?" he says again, grinning at her, firm hand working between her legs. "Better?"

"Yes best," she gasps, arching her back and spreading her legs even farther apart for him, rolling her hips, "yes, feels—_so_ good, that's—yes—"

Megamind hums, pleased, and slips his other arm back under her again, down under her body to cuddle her up against him. He lifts her upper body into his center of gravity and holds her there as she twines her arms around him, one around his shoulders and the other with her hand clenching and clutching between his shoulder blades as he pumps his fingers in and out of her. He's holding both of them up on his one elbow, now, watching her face with delighted interest from a few inches away as he wrings helpless little cries and noises out of her, until suddenly she fixes her wild eyes on him and gasps, "_Kiss me_—"

Megamind is only too happy to oblige, kissing her now with his hand on her back, his fingers inside her body—but—oh, her hips buck and stutter and Roxanne screams into his mouth, grinds down into his palm, clenches and flutters and falls apart in his arms.

He kisses her again and keeps kissing her as he brings her down, feeling no less dizzly overwhelmed than before, if in a somewhat different direction. "Roxanne," he murmurs as he finally slips his fingers out of her, and she blinks at him, smiling. "Roxanne, you really are unspeakably fantastic, do you know that?"

She smiles wider and hums, then wraps her arms around him and pulls him close, nuzzles into his shoulder, presses her lips to his chest. "Love you," she mumbles, and squeezes him.

"That was fun," he says, and she relaxes her arms and looks up at him from the pillow, and grins.

"C'mere," she says, stroking her nails up his back before he can ask what the look on her face means. "Come here, I want to try something. Are you good to keep going?"

He blinks down at her, startled when she grips his wrist. "I…yes, but…yes?" She raises her eyebrows, holds his gaze as she takes his fingers into her mouth to clean them off. Megamind's pupils pin twice and blow wide open again as he says, stunned, "I'm…_yes_, good to, yes."

She grins and releases him, then nudges his side a little, slides a leg under his as he lifts himself up at her direction—so he slips between her legs and presses his sex against her, shivering at the sudden contact.

And hesitates briefly, worried; is this what she meant? But Roxanne pulls her knees up, locks her ankles behind his narrow waist, and grinds up against him hard enough to make his mouth fall open and his eyes roll back in his head, and there's his answer.

"_Yes_," Roxanne hisses, and scrapes her nails down the middle of his chest and stomach, brushes them lightly over the markings on his ribs—his hips jerk—lifts a hand to run her fingertips up the back of his neck and press again into the dip at the base of his skull and make him cry out. She keeps her ankles locked as she rolls her hips, does her best to try and guide him, to set some kind of shared rhythm as they start to learn how to move together.

Her eyes snap open again a minute later as Megamind shifts a little and brings a hand down to spread her labia apart, moving to settle the cool slickness of that central stripe directly against her. She tilts her head at him, questioning, and he gulps, smiles down at her, rolls his hips and drops onto his elbows to kiss her again, slipping his fingers into her hair.

"Okay?" he says, a second later, hips moving against her, sweet, slow waves of pressure on her clit and the sensitive skin of her sex. "Like this?"

Roxanne gasps a syllable and manages a nod; coherent thought has pretty much stopped. Her knuckles go white where she's holding him and he tosses his head back over her hand and moans as she leans dizzily up to brush open-mouthed kisses over his collarbones and throat before she falls to the sheets again, gasping.

She _feels _him, pulsing not inside but against her. His temperature is cool but it's like he's _hot _against her, like tiny fiery flickers of electricity crackling up and over and through her—she can't quantify it, can't describe it, but she feels Megamind singing up through her, his heartbeat and his breathing and the sharp taste-smell roiling off him. It feels like getting tipsy, a little bit, but instead of starting off as a pleasant tingling warmth behind her eyes, this rises up from below and shudders through her bloodstream, throbs to the beat of her heart and his in tandem. It feels—good. It feels weird as hell but it feels _amazingly good_.

Megamind dips his head a little, mouth open, and grinds down against her just as she bucks up to meet him, and something about the combination makes his eyes slam closed as he shudders and whistlescreams again, his hips twisting as he convulses and curls down around her, pressing his face to her shoulder, her breast. And if Roxanne's first orgasm built like a wave and then crested, this one pulls her down deep and breathless like undertow, unexpected and inexorable, no warning at all. It leaves Roxanne trembling and panting all over again in its wake, Megamind's name on her lips, wondering what the heck _that_ was.

Megamind gulps, panting, then just wiggles up to rest his cheek on Roxanne's shoulder, the swell of his skull on the pillow by her ear. Her arms come up around his narrow back like she's afraid he's going to roll away, and—oh, his body feels loose and relaxed but his heart is so full he thinks it might burst. They're both breathless and weak-limbed, Roxanne is all over sweat-slick, and Megamind isn't altogether sure if he would be able to stand up right now if he tried.

He has no idea what to say in the face of all that, but Roxanne recovers her powers of speech a little before he does. "Yeah," she pants, "yeah, you were right, that was fun. Was already fun. Lots of fun. And," she adds, sounding dizzy as she cranes her neck to look down at him where he's pillowed on her chest, "I hope you can believe me when I tell you, the alien thing? Definitely to your advantage." She strokes her palm down his spine a couple times, petting him, and presses her other hand to the side of his giant blue head. "Major bonus. Points in your favor, I promise; you are so sexy it's absolutely unreal, okay?" She heaves a contented sigh, still petting him gently, smelling of love and contentment and something he thinks might be joy. "Good lord. I don't know how that was for you but it was absolutely amazing for me; I am not going fucking _anywhere_, okay? You believe me?"

He lifts his head to stare at her for a moment before he laughs, coughs a little, laughs harder, nodding hard because he cannot say _Fuck, yes_.

"Good," she says. Megamind hauls himself up and puts his long hand on the side of her face, presses several quick little kisses across her cheeks, her forehead, her jaw. Roxanne hums at him, contented, and when he finally settles back down again, she turns her head to kiss the top of his high forehead. He snuggles in as close to her as he can.

"By the way," she says, a moment later, lips moving against his skin, "I don't suppose you know what's in the stuff that you…um. Of. Of your stuff?

"Why? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Roxanne says, "but I had…a sort of…reaction to it; I'm not sure what that was about. Also, I'm freezing." She's started to shiver.

He frowns. "Is that normal?" he wants to know. Roxanne shrugs, or maybe the shivers have grown more violent—they _have _grown more violent; he's sure of it. Alarmed, he rises to his knees and lifts her into his lap, ignoring her startled squawk of protest in favor of pulling the sheet and blankets and quilt and comforter up and laying her down. He scoots down behind her, tucks both of them under the heavy layer of blankets he keeps on his bed, and spoons in against her back, holding her to his chest, wondering if she might be allergic to him and thinking that would be just awful. She chuckles a little, relaxing back against him, still trembling.

"I'll be okay, really."

"Bull," he says sharply, clutching her against his chest. "You're _shivering_."

"Oh, you big worrywart." She nestles backwards into him so he can hold her against him with both arms, and _fuck_, Megamind is the _luckiest son of a bitch _on the face of planet Earth. "I'll be okay soon. I have you to cuddle me."

"I'm probably not the best person to use for body heat," he admits, without letting go of her. He isn't sure if he can; only an hour or so ago, he was completely sure he'd never get to hold her like this again and thinking about that makes his heart sort of seize up. "My core body temperature is a few degrees lower than that of a human."

"I know." Roxanne turns her head to the side, glancing back at him, and he lifts his head and looks down at her in surprise. "You think I haven't noticed how you're always cold? Besides, you keep the Lair cool, even in the winter, and you were always quicker getting me here in summer. Doesn't take a genius to figure out you don't care for warm weather." She lets out a small sigh. "It's nice," she adds, petting the top of one of his feet with her toes. "You're like the cool side of the pillow."

His mouth curves into a smile. Part of his mind is still hung up on the idea that this is further proof that the two of them are incompatible. But the fact that he is pressed full-length against Roxanne's naked body is louder, and the memory of what they have just done together is stronger, and so he hums a little and buries his nose in her damp hair. "What else have you figured out?"

Roxanne thinks for a while. "Well, you've had these thick blankets since I first started staying over here. And you wear shoes and gloves inside almost all the time, even when you don't have to. I'm guessing the Lair is a little bit _too _cold, even for you."

"I like being warmed," Megamind agrees. "Too cold is better than too hot, but warm is nice when the air is cool. And I hate waking up cold. You're _sure _you're okay?" he adds. She's stopped shivering and he thinks that her skin is almost as warm as it usually is, but it can't hurt to check.

"I'm fine. Sleepy. But, um. I asked because…when you came, so did I. And I wasn't expecting to, and it felt…a little different than usual. It was nice," she adds quickly, "don't get me wrong, you felt great! Just…surprising." She yawns. "And also very wet?" she adds inquiringly. "I think the jelly-stuff on your…on your whatevers, it seemed to get a lot more watery towards the end, there. We're going to have to change the sheets and blankets tomorrow."

He sighs. "My…it's called mucilage. It contains endorphins, but I didn't realize it would be enough to cause you to have a spike just from…intimate contact with it. Oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine, norepinephrine. A few other neurotransmitters. And it liquifies when I come, yes," he adds, sounding embarrassed even to his own ears. "It's. Messy. I'm sorry. I mostly only…you may want to take a shower."

Roxanne is quiet for a moment. Then she says, "We could take one together. Now. And change the sheets after and _then _go to sleep."

Megamind pauses, considering this. On one hand, he does very much want to go to sleep...but on the other hand, _shower with Roxanne_. Naked Roxanne in a shower with him. Him, naked and very visible, but _also visible naked Roxanne_. "Huh," he says, feeling that some response is expected of him.

His girlfriend rolls over in his arms. She's grinning. "You look like you would be into that." Megamind isn't sure what expression he's wearing, but Roxanne's gaze flicks around his face and then she laughs. "Come on, love," she says, urging him to sit up with her. "Let's go get cleaned up."

"And potentially other things?" he asks, intrigued.

Roxanne kisses his nose, and he wrinkles it at her, amused and amazed and so desperately in love with her that he aches. "And potentially other things," she agrees, still laughing. "Come on."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BY FAR the most frequent question and constructive piece of criticism I've received re: Megamind's Flat Boner is "what does it look like, this description is hella vague." And yeah, the original descriptions are, indeed, very vague. Truth be told, I didn't have much of a solid idea of what the thing looked like except that it was (a) flat and (b) kinda triangular-ish? But I have finally nailed down what it looks like in my head and I tried to be more detailed this time around! Maybe someday I will do an art and post it.
> 
> Anyway, the markings at Megamind's groin are glands that secrete a blend of hormones analogous to the ones Roxanne's brain produces during orgasm. These are suspended in a homogeneous solution designed for rapid absorption through skin and mucous membranes. Basically, shared orgasms come with the territory if she's straddling him or has her mouth on him.
> 
> My inspiration for the texture of Megamind's junk prior to orgasm is the mucilage pads under the leaves of the watershield plant, because I _love touching watershield_ holy shit best texture experience _ever_. It's so slippery! And pretty! It's delightful! :D
> 
> References for visual, if you're a visual person: [reference 1](https://newfs.s3.amazonaws.com/taxon-images-1000s1000/Nymphaeaceae/brasenia-schreberi-sf-dkausen.jpg) / [reference 2](https://mamabluefoot.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/dscn0017.jpg?w=829&h=&zoom=2)
> 
> Unfortunately, it does mean he's kind of messy. I figure he usually jacks off in the shower. Or maybe into a damp sponge, idk. But I figure hey, sex is fairly messy irl, so…*shrug* Might as well just let it be messy.
> 
> Anyway, big hug! Next update will probably be way faster, haha.
> 
> fun fact for the day: monotremes are mammals that don't have nipples! and seals have retractable nipples, and dolphin nipples are hidden inside pockets in their skin! you learn a lot of weird facts when you're writing porn about aliens and you want to know what your options are.


	13. Chapter 13

Megamind is awake and staring at the ceiling. Again. It isn't _fair;_ he ought to be asleep right now. He was able to get some sleep earlier, nearly four whole hours of sleep. And he was warm the whole time, which was nice.

But he's awake now, and he has too much on his mind to be able to really relax.

The harbor filter is working. It's performing better than he was expecting it to, in fact; Metro Harbor is the clearest and cleanest it's been in living memory. But clear water is not necessarily healthy water. _I need to double-check and make sure it isn't removing any good things from the water with the bad_. Colonies of algae and bacteria have built up in the filtration system, which bodes well, but Megamind will still need to check that the filter isn't negatively impacting the lake's phytoplankton.

And the Metro Tower rebuild is behind schedule again. Last week's minor hiccup with the electricians has been smoothed over and progress is still underway, but there must be a way to get everything back on track. Move some brainbots from construction to wiring?

Also, there's a shortage of windows in the city and he's going to need to fix that. Most of the glass that was broken in the past year has finally been replaced, but there are still a few shops waiting for the next shipment of plate glass to come in. _Note to self: call major suppliers in Detroit and Chicago, see if they can give me a discount on a bulk order. And rent another storage unit for the Tower window glass; the furniture alone should fill up the four units we already have_.

Speaking of furniture, he also needs to call the company that's supposed to be sending desks in for one of the office buildings Hal smashed when he turned the broken Tower around. The building itself has been fully repaired, and all the other supplies have arrived, but nobody can return to work until they have desks. The order has been delayed for more than two weeks in spite of the extra fee Megamind paid for a rush delivery, and that's just unacceptable. He can afford it, easily, but still, he's definitely going to recover the rush fee, one way or another. He'll route the money into some city fund or other, then cook the books so nobody notices.

No, he can't do that anymore; that's illegal. It'll have to be via an anonymous donation. Yes.

But there have been so many "anonymous donations" lately. Someone will notice.

He frowns.

Hmm. He could create another fake organization. Build a website, establish a false history, then contact the appropriate people in Metro City as one of the organization's board members and establish a relationship… No he couldn't; that's mostly illegal too. And for something on this scale, of this nature, it would almost certainly require the alteration of federal tax records, and that's _very _illegal. (Although certainly not impossible. He's done it before.)

(Twice.)

And anyway, 'relationship' would tend to mean extended interaction, and the city would eventually be expected to reciprocate somehow. So what would be the point, really?

_Another anonymous donation, then_. He sighs.

_And _he needs to terminate the three identities that are still receiving insider information on a few high-trading companies . He does feel badly about those. He's been ignoring the calls, really he has; he just hasn't had time to actually get rid of the identities. First thing tomorrow morning—okay, first thing later today, but after the sun is up—all documents in those names are going through the shredder and then he will personally burn them. He will watch them turn to ash. He _will_. He will _make _time to do it.

He should go do it now, while he's still thinking about it.

But he doesn't want to. He wants to go to sleep. He closes his eyes, hopeful, but they won't stay shut. _Whoopee_. The downside to all the caffeine he's been using, he supposes.

He sighs, frustrated, and Roxanne stirs beside him, rolls over, burrows back under his arm and then lies still.

Megamind looks at her. She's curled on her side under the covers, and her skin is warm against his, and he smiles. He's tired—he's _exhausted_—but he does have her to thank for the sleep he was able to get earlier.

This is twice now he's wronged her, and twice now she's forgiven him. It's the second time things have worked out exactly the opposite of what he was expecting. There will not be a third time. He will not hurt her like this again, he will _not._

He rolls over and picks up the notepad and pen he keeps by his bed to jot down the ideas that come to him in his sleep, tears off the top few pages. Scribbles himself a brief note on the first blank sheet he comes to, then puts the pad back down. He'll rewrite that note as often as he has to, in as many languages as he knows, until he believes it. It's all about building neural pathways. Right? He just…needs to build the habit. Maybe it will help.

There will be no more sleep tonight, at least not for the time being, although he knows he can usually catch an hour just before dawn. So he sits up with a sigh and swings his legs over the side of his bed, shuffles around with his feet until he finds his slippers. Shivering a little in the cold air, he hurries to get into his pajamas, then pads silently to the door and heads off down the hall.

He needs to reorient himself. His life has been turned on its head; he needs something to hold onto in the midst of all the madness.

Everything was a lot easier back when everyone hated him. People just sort of _look _at him now. Some of them talk to him, some of them avoid him…mostly, they just don't know what to do with him.

But he can walk to the corner bakery as himself. He tried it for the first time a couple weeks ago as an experiment, on a relatively cool morning—leather and gloves and cape and all, spiked and pointy and evil-looking, and he walked out the door with his holowatch turned off and his heart pounding in his ears like a drum. Walked in full daylight through the maze of empty warehouses that surround his power plant to Giorgio's Patisserie, an Italian family-owned bakery with a French name that does surprisingly well for its location. And opened the door, shaking in his boots but doing his best not to show it.

Giorgio blinked once, but that was all the indication he gave that he was surprised, and then he came out from behind the counter to shake Megamind's hand, looking about as surprised and delighted as Megamind felt. "Whoops, careful of the spikes," he said, and laughed in a way that Megamind knew he meant as friendly. And Megamind laughed, too, astonished and relieved, and he walked out of the bakery ten minutes later with a white paper bag containing the first legitimate purchase he had made as himself in years.

It's incredible, and he loves it, but it's also more than a little bit terrifying to go places without his holowatch. He still can't really handle crowds.

But he doesn't _want _to hide from people, anymore. This is his city and he's working to fix it, the citizens _know_ he's working to fix it; he's working for _good;_ he shouldn't _have _to hide anymore. Megamind wants the same thing he's always wanted, the thing he gave up on ever attaining years ago—acceptance—and he's finally actually getting it, he's getting it in spades. It's frightening.

He needs to ask Roxanne where she got the new holowatch persona. He was fiddling around with the new chip this afternoon—as far as he can tell, there are several hundred new images, all featuring the same man wearing different outfits. The styles of clothing are all over the place, and the seasonality ranges from spring to winter. And the winter clothes are brilliantly arranged. For each outfit, there's that outfit with a coat; that outfit with a coat and scarf; that outfit with a coat, a scarf, and gloves; that outfit with a coat, scarf, gloves, and hat. The summer clothes also are grouped in variations, but to a lesser extent (after all, winter is when normal people dress in layers).

Bernard had one outfit: the blue turtleneck and brown suit jacket combo. This new persona has _hundreds_. The sudden deluge of options is, honestly, kind of intimidating.

Megamind needs to reorient. He still has one constant in his crazy, upside-down world, only one, and he needs it now more than ever.

Main Storage is what he's taken to calling the huge deaerator bay he uses as a catch-all for his supplies, his shelves of old, small projects, his blueprints, and most of his monitoring screens. He flops into his swivel chair and pushes off the floor, squeaking his way over to the usual control panel where he pulls out the collapsible viewfinder. It takes him a few minutes to find the right distance, the right coordinates, and bring everything into focus. Once he does all that, he settles forward with his elbows on the dark controls so that he can just stare into the viewfinder without having to think about balance.

Inhale. Exhale. It's sad, kind of, that this is the only way he can stop thinking anymore.

"What are you doing?"

Megamind jumps, looks wildly around. Roxanne is standing just inside the curtain, her moccasined feet poking out from under the blue and black dressing gown.

"Wha—nothing," he says hastily. It's a reflex more than anything else; this is private.

Roxanne blinks. Frowns.

"It's, I couldn't sleep," Megamind stammers, scooting to hide the viewfinder behind his back. "So I came down here. I do that, sometimes. When I can't sleep."

She knows he's hiding something; he can tell, and he inwardly curses his inability to lie convincingly. And he doesn't—he doesn't want to lie to her, not really, it's just—he isn't sure he wants to elaborate further? This is _private_. Why did she have to wake up, why did she have to follow him, why did she—

He can feel himself growing defensive, can feel the tension pull his shoulders square and stiff.

But Roxanne doesn't look reproachful or upset. She just looks vaguely, sleepily quizzical. "Can I see?"

He sends a glance over his shoulder at the viewfinder, then turns back around, biting his lip.

What is he afraid of? He knows she won't laugh. Well, okay, she might, but she won't mean it. And she probably won't laugh at all, anyway—but—

But still. _This_. This isn't something he ever expected to share with anyone—this is his, and his alone. It's been his solace when he needs it, his outlet, the one fixed point in his life when he feels like even Minion might not be the one to turn to. This is Megamind's true north and Megamind is deeply territorial; he has never been good at sharing his things.

But on the other hand, this is Roxanne asking. And Roxanne has almost certainly had enough of him hiding things from her, so Megamind swallows his pride and his worry and his shivering, childish selfishness and nods jerkily. "Sure," he says. "Of course, come here."

Roxanne doesn't move, just tilts her head a little and studies him. He can't tell what she's thinking, but the moment stretches out and she still doesn't move.

And then she steps back, shakes her head. "No, it's okay. I didn't mean to intrude, you don't have to show me if you don't want to."

Megamind blinks, pulls his head back. She surprised him with that one, and she grins sleepily when his wide-eyed astonished stare wanes into a smile of shy, tentative relief.

"I just followed you 'cause I was curious." She shrugs a little, turns to leave, yawns. "I'm going back to bed now. Try to get some sleep, 'kay?" Then she chuckles. "Sleep, Megamind. You need it."

She disappears up the hall. She doesn't see the way Megamind has gone absolutely still in his chair or the way all the blood has drained out of his face.

Day six. His father's face, tired and careworn. His mother's voice. "_Sleep, dearest. You need it_." It's like hearing a ghost.

No. No no no sleep. He—he knows what he has to do. It's going to be difficult—hellishly complex—but—he can do it. Light sources are not easy to work with, and he'll need to program conflicting frequencies and multiple line-of-sight interactions. And there is the problem of routing video feed from the telescope lens to the cameras. And the perspective and scale are going to be nearly impossible to work out. But he can do it. He has to. He _needs _to.

Wide awake and wondering vaguely about a soundtrack as he plans, he rolls out the 3-D projectors.

* * *

"Roxanne." There's a hand on her shoulder, long fingers wrapped around her arm, shaking gently. "Roxanne?"

She stirs, turns her face to the pillow. "Mmmglfh."

Megamind shakes her more insistently. "_Roxanne_," he hisses. "Wake up. Please?"

It's the 'please' that pulls at her, it always does. He always sounds so hesitant. "Time's it?" she mumbles, slowly shifting to sit up. Megamind releases her as soon as she moves.

"Quarter past four. Come on, I want to show you—I want you to see something."

She sniffs, scrubs the back of her hand over her eyes. Megamind looks tired, too, but his green eyes are shining and there's an excited smile hovering around the corners of his mouth like it's afraid to show itself.

"Mmkay," Roxanne says, and crawls out of bed. Her neck is stiff.

Megamind is holding out her robe for her, and she shrugs into it. Even as sleepy as she is, the way he moves catches her attention—he helps her into the robe but releases it as soon as she's in, drawing his hands away from her shoulders without touching her. He ties the sash around her waist using only the tips of his fingers, then turns and almost skips to the door.

Roxanne frowns after him, puzzled. She hasn't seen him like this in a while, not since he gave up villainy. Not since—when was the last time? Was it the last time he kidnapped her? Was it at the museum, in his first few minutes as Bernard? He's moving the way he used to when he had a new plan, something to show off, and judging by how he's holding his elbows away from his sides, it's probably a full-scale doomsday device. Probably something geomorphic or volcanic, if the way he's bouncing is any indication. Either that or a really, _really_ big laser.

Megamind dances down the hall while Roxanne trails slowly along behind him, utterly confused.

When she rounds the corner to Main Storage, he's sitting in the high-backed chair where she found him only a few hours earlier. He's rubbing his hands together, his expression frightened and enthusiastic all at once. Something is different about the room—she can't quite put her finger on it. But before she can look around much, Megamind licks his lips, throws a switch, and the windowless Lair is plunged into absolute darkness. Roxanne feels the curtain trundle closed behind her.

Megamind's quiet voice threads its way out of the dark. "This is what I was looking at," he says, and there's another _click _and Roxanne's jaw drops. Her eyes go wide.

The Lair is still completely dark—she can't see viewscreens, or machines, or Megamind, but the air around her is filled with soft, distant music and points of brilliant light. The farthest ones away are barely pinpricks while the largest ones, the ones closest to her, are easily as big as her head. No two are exactly alike.

The totality of the illusion is bizarre; it's like everything has disappeared but this, and all Roxanne can see, no matter which way she turns—even if she's looking straight down, which is exceptionally weird and a little bit scary—is a field of lights extending into infinity. Some look like clusters of smaller pinpricks of light and some look like little more than glowing frozen smoke, but most are flat, and shaped like hurricanes.

Galaxies. She isn't sure how he did it, but somehow, Megamind is projecting a close-up view of outer space into his Lair in three dimensions. It's like being the Hubble telescope. It's beautiful.

She finds her voice. It's strained, and she realizes that she hasn't been breathing. "Oh, my god, Megamind, what is—"

Megamind looms out of the array of stars, dimly lit from all directions, watching her with a kind of hopeful pride. "This way," he says, taking her hand and tugging gently. Roxanne balks; her mind is still asleep enough to register the galaxies as obstacles, and if she moves, she'll—throw them off course or—fall—into the infinite blackness below her feet—the endless void of space—

Megamind grins and squeezes her fingers, brushes her bangs to the side with his other hand. "It's just a projection," he says softly, so she lets him pull her away. Right. Yes. A projection. This is a projection, not a dream.

How Megamind can tell where he's going is anyone's guess. Roxanne can't see the floor; she only knows it's there because her feet keep hitting it, but this is like walking into and onto nothing. Her grip is probably crushing Megamind's hand, but he doesn't say anything about it.

She stumbles a little against him when he stops moving; she was staring up and around at the starfield. Now she squints into the blackness and feels a shift in her focus, like switching from looking at the surface of a lake to gazing down through the water—there are shapes behind the dark, somehow in the same space as the dark, but she's able to see that they're standing over by the wall of control panels. Megamind reaches down and flutters a hand over the keys. "See up there?" he asks, pointing with his other hand. "That's the Milky Way. That's us."

The galaxies shift, dance, pull back and fade out around the one he pointed out—one of a thousand, one of a trillion—which dives at the two bipeds and expands, explodes into brilliance around them before falling into darkness. When Roxanne's eyes adjust again, she's surrounded for what looks like miles—light years—[by individual stars, all different sizes, different colors](https://stars.chromeexperiments.com/).

"Okay," Megamind says, as Roxanne gapes around at all this. "Okay, now, hold on—see that one? I'm bringing it in—"

He makes some adjustments and the starfield shifts, spins around and past them, and Roxanne reaches out with both hands on reflex, moving to catch a whitish-burning star roughly the size of her fist as it drops to hang in the air in front of her, over her hands. "This," Megamind says, "is Sol." He smiles a little. "You Are Here."

Roxanne smiles, delighted, both hands cupped under her sun as it lights her palms and face. "It's green," she exclaims, surprised. It is, a little bit. Not quite pure white, just a little bit green-tinted. "It's—I didn't know the sun was green."

"It's why plants are green," Megamind says, "more or less." His voice is warm, but Roxanne does pick up something like a faint tremor in his tone. "It's—you can't see Sol as green; it puts out white light; as far as anyone on Earth is concerned, Sol is white. But, but its light is—concentrated in green wavelengths, yes. This is a projection; it's, um. Color-corrected, sort of."

"It's lovely," Roxanne says after a moment, and Megamind gulps so loudly she can hear it even from where she's standing.

He leans down and makes another adjustment. Sol lifts from her hands, spins away, rotates and falls out of sight.

Finally the whirling starfield settles again. Megamind moves to stand close behind Roxanne, and he puts his hands on her shoulders and waits for a minute while she stares around at the shimmering matrix—and then he takes her left hand in his and gently turns her around. He lifts their joined hands toward a Sol-like star hanging some seven feet in the air, with a much smaller, much whiter star hanging just below it.

"This," he says, "is the binary star system T Pyxidis."

Then he moves their hands to point at the slightly larger star, the one that looks more or less like Roxanne's sun. "That one," he says.

Roxanne glances sideways at him. He's pressed against her back; his right hand still rests on her shoulder and their left arms are extended together out and up, and he's leaning forward past her shoulder and staring up with shining eyes at the star. His hand tightens around hers.

"That one," he says again, and there are tears in his voice, now, "was called—" and here he leans his head against hers and makes a sound Roxanne can't hope to repeat, a low, warbling trill.

Roxanne looks back up at the star. Understanding comes crashing down, wakes her up completely with a shock like ice. "Home?" she asks, and feels him nod.

The stars are amazing enough by themselves, but for him to show her something so incredibly personal…there's no comparison. It's impossible. There is absolutely nothing Roxanne can compare to what Megamind is doing, but she can feel the weight of its significance in the tone of his voice, in the way he's standing.

She drops her arm just as he lowers his head to press his mouth to her shoulder, wrapping his thin arms around her and huddling close against her back, holding her like a shield between himself and his home star. He's—the implications of what he's doing, what he's showing her, are—

Megamind is the absolute last of his people, alone in a way that Roxanne cannot even begin to comprehend. His planet is dead, torn apart and compressed by the gravity of a collapsing star. The people of his new world threw him to the ground and kicked him until he stayed there. Everything he has, he made himself: built from the ground up with his hands. And now he's—he's showing her the last piece he has of his home. The last _anyone _has of his home. Roxanne is standing on Earth and looking across the years at a star that died eight days after Megamind was born, and right now, she feels every lonely, empty mile of it.

All the planets in the galaxy, and he was sent to hers. All the countries on Earth, and he fell to this one. And, out of all the people in Metro City—out of all the seven billion people on Earth—Megamind picked her.

And he thinks _he's _the lucky one?

(Megamind isn't sure what she's thinking, but she went from sleepy emotional flatline to shock to love-love-love just _boiling _off her in about five seconds flat. Its olfactory feel is a little like cloves—it has the same sharp edge, the same soft warmth.)

And, good lord, what is Roxanne supposed to say? How do you respond to something like this without a full choir to back you up?

She has to say something, doesn't she? "This is…" The words are barely there. "You just…_this_." Okay, no, maybe she should just stop trying. Someday she'll be able to form a coherent sentence again.

Megamind chuckles, ducks his head down against her shoulder again, and says nothing. A long moment passes.

"I think I know what this means to you." Roxanne's voice is low. "And it…I understand what you're doing? Here? And—thank you. For this. It's…a little overwhelming." He tenses. "In a good way," she adds quickly, and feels him relax again. She releases a breath and leans back against him a little. "I wish you knew how much I love you."

She isn't aware she said the last part out loud until he clears his throat. "I do, in fact," he admits awkwardly. "Actually, it's…kind of making me dizzy."

Roxanne turns her head to look at him, sees him grinning at her out of the corner of his eye, and bursts out laughing. "Oh, no—I'm sorry—I can try to, to tone it down or something—"

But Megamind is laughing, too, and shaking his head. "No no, it's okay. Just means I need to spend more time with you, that's all." He pokes his nose into the soft little dip under her ear and inhales, then shivers all over, still laughing. "Whoaaaaagh," he says, "that'll clear out your sinuses. _Eeeyikes_."

Roxanne has to turn around and put her arms around him to keep from falling over laughing, but that only makes Megamind laugh harder. And they both end up sitting on the floor, leaning on one another and snickering.

Last night, she wanted to wring his skinny neck. Now she wants nothing more than to sit in the middle of this projection with him forever.

She's sitting in the middle of space. It looks so _real_. Roxanne doesn't know much about programming, but she's pretty sure this kind of hologram can't be easy to create. It takes up the space inside the Lair, then overlays obstacles to give the impression that it goes on forever. "This is incredible," she tells him, slowly scooting until she can lean back against the base of his control panel. Megamind blinks around at her, then follows. "It's like I'm looking through four dimensions."

"Five, in fact," he replies, slowly settling in next to her. Roxanne can hear the smile in his voice. "Self-contained infinite cascading tesseract. My own invention, you need it to get the perspective right, to get the scale to work out. Basically useless except for things like this." He pauses, asks shyly, "Do you like it?"

She turns and stares at him. He looks so hopeful, and her reply of, _That's a silly question, what on earth do you think,_ dies on her lips.

Instead, she says slowly, "Do you remember the first night I stayed over here? When I told you I loved you more than there are stars?" Megamind nods, cocks his head and one eyebrow in a question. "And how you tried to tell me it was a flawed comparison?"

"I remember." Then he grins. "I also remember where you had your hands. It was…most distracting."

Roxanne grins, too. "And now I know exactly why," she teases, lifting a hand to cup the side of his neck and just rest her fingertips softly over his spine. He blinks at her, tips his head toward her a little and leans into her palm. "And I also know why the comparison is flawed, now. It's volumetric, isn't it? Love would be measured as a volume, but the quantity of stars is just a number-line figure." She waits for Megamind to nod again before she continues, sliding her arm around his shoulders and tugging him to curl in against her. "Well, I'll try again. I love you enough to fill all the space _between _the stars."

He leans back a little to regard her in silence for a while, feeling a funny half-smile tweaking his lips to the side as he tries to figure out how to respond to that. Eventually he just goes for total honesty. "Roxanne, you can't possibly comprehend the size of that sort of space."

Her answering smile is the soft, fond one that she shows him so rarely and that always makes his heart skip a few beats. It's so unguarded. "Megamind," she returns, "I don't have to."

He has to look away, then—has to tuck the side of his head into the crook of her neck and turn to look back up at T Pyxidis, because if he doesn't, he'll cry again, and now is not the time for tears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The sun is green! True <strike>albeit oversimplified</strike> fact! And I'm assuming Megamind is pretty confident in his "it's why plants are green" comment -- in truth, we aren't 100% sure why chlorophyll is pigmented the way it is. But [this article has a bunch of really cool hypotheses](https://www.space.com/3680-colorful-worlds-plants-planets-green.html)! And we do seem to be pretty sure the sun luminescing heavily in green wavelengths has _something_ to do with it, even if we aren't sure exactly what.
> 
> Here's [another link](https://stars.chromeexperiments.com/) to that site that sort of looks like what I imagine the starfield Megamind comes up with might look like. I want to say that site directly inspired this chapter, but at this point it's been too long and I can't remember if I came up with the chapter and then found the site, or what. Oh, well. 
> 
> (What are your thoughts on links in the text itself? Distracting? Better at the end of a chapter rather than within it?)
> 
> Edited note to add: HERE'S THE NOTE I TYPED OUT A MONTH AGO AND COULDN'T FRICKIN FIND, JEEZ  
Originally, I wrote T Pyxidis as a red giant. I’m no longer sure why I did this. We _know_ neither of the stars in the binary system T Pyx is a red giant, and the white dwarf in the system is already close to supernoval collapse, so like...what was the point of that?   
Anyway, [T Pyx is a binary star system 3,260 light-years from Sol, located in the constellation Pyxis](https://www.space.com/7734-explosive-nearby-star-threaten-earth.html). The system is comprised of a white dwarf and a sun-like star, the former of which is already a recurrent nova. I highly recommend clicking that link; it goes to an article that will explain why I chose T Pyxidis as Megamind’s home star system way better than I’ll be able to in this space. The tl;dr is: the white dwarf is putting on mass, which is dangerous for a white dwarf to do, because it will eventually push the dwarf into type 1a supernova territory. Current estimates put this at around ten million years from now--a long time from our perspective, but on an astral scale that’s super-duper soon. Yikes.


	14. Chapter 14

_Clank. Clank. Clank. _Shuffle. …_whirrrrrrrrr_

Roxanne cracks an eye open, trying to remember where she is and trying to figure out why she hurts all over. She's leaning against Megamind, and he's leaning against her, and they are sitting on…

…Nothing. Hm.

She's strongly considering freaking out about this when Minion's voice echoes out of the blackness. "Sir? Are you in heee_eere…!_"

Right. The starfield. Megamind's home star system.

"Sir? _Sir!_" Minion actually sounds a little bit panicked.

Roxanne lifts her head and blinks a little, trying to see through the darkness. "Minion?"

There's a pause. "Miss Ritchi? What's going on?"

"Hang on. Um…"

She jostles her boyfriend a little bit and Megamind comes awake in a flurry of juddering limbs like a marionette spasming to life. Or, rather, a marionette _trying_ to spasm to life. His whole body jerks, twitches, and then he yelps and presses a hand to his shoulder, hissing between his teeth.

He slits his eyes open and peers at Roxanne. "You okay?" he asks, teeth gritted.

"Yeah, I feel like a million bucks," she groans, stretching slowly and feeling the pull of cramped muscles. "How do we turn off the projection?"

Megamind grips the edge of the controls above their heads and pulls himself to his feet with a pained whine. Roxanne hears the click-ticking of his keyboards, and then their view of outer space finally blinks out and Roxanne is once again sitting on the floor of the Lair's deaerator bay, blinking in the morning sunlight streaming through the windows near the ceiling.

Minion is standing in the doorway, looking deeply unsettled. Roxanne doesn't blame him. She can't imagine what pulling back a curtain and staring out into the infinite darkness of space would be like, especially in broad daylight.

But Minion is accustomed to life with Megamind, and he recovers quickly. "New projection, Sir?" he says, clanking over to where Megamind is still standing hunched over the controls, struggling and failing to straighten his spine. "Interesting perspective."

Megamind nods, winces. "Yes, I developed it last night," he says, sounding strained. His shoulders twitch once and he lets out a high-pitched keening cry of pain, staggers against the controls. "Minion," he gasps, holding himself up with one hand splayed over the inactive touch display and his elbow locked, "Minion, please—can you—the pins, I need—"

Roxanne scrambles onto her feet, blinking in the sunlight and reaching to steady Megamind as he sways. He pitches towards her and she catches him around his chest, gripping his shoulder. His spine is curved sideways and his other arm is curled against his chest. The arch of his long neck looks extremely awkward and uncomfortable.

"Way ahead of you," Minion says, and sets a box of what looks like very long, thin pins down on the seat of Megamind's chair. "This will only be a moment, Sir. Miss Ritchi, would you get his shirt off for me while I sterilize these?"

Confused, she nods and shuffles to let Megamind lean against her so she can undo the buttons on his pajama top. His face is tight with pain and his movements are slow, but Roxanne manages to help him crawl out of his shirt without too much trouble. "Here," she says, thinking she'll help him turn so he can lean on the controls with both hands, "here, can you turn, do you think you can…ah, okay, no, that's not going to work, huh." Megamind just clicks miserably in his throat at her, grimacing.

So she just throws his shirt over her shoulder and strokes his back and focuses on helping him stay upright. She's got a knot in her neck near her shoulder, too, but it's nothing too debilitating.

"Are you steady there, Miss Ritchi?" Minion asks, regarding her seriously. "He can't move until this is done; can you hold him there?"

She nods. Megamind is mostly supporting his own weight, he's just leaning on her to keep from falling over. "Yep. Rock solid."

Minion turns to Megamind. "Ready, Sir?"

"Yes—yes please, please just—_shit_, ow, please hurry—" There's a high whine over his words, and Roxanne has to wonder, in spite of her mounting concern, how he would vocalize if he was raised on a different world than Earth. Would he be able to sound human at all?

Minion sighs. "I don't know why you do this to yourself, Sir, I really don't," he says, and then, to Roxanne's extreme astonishment, places one of the pins into Megamind's back to the left of the base of his spine, pushes it deep into the muscle there. Megamind's face twitches, but that's the only sign he gives that he feels it, and he doesn't move when Minion inserts another pin, then another, until there are two rows of pins running up the middle of his back, on either side of his spine.

Roxanne is openly staring.

Carefully, Minion places the last two pins at the top of Megamind's neck, just under the curve of his skull. "Okay, Sir! You are good to go. Miss Ritchi, you can step back now."

Eyes closed, Megamind takes a deep breath and then, as he exhales, twists smoothly back into alignment, taking his hand off the console and lifting his head into place. The rest of his body follows him up to standing—all in all, it's an oddly serpentine movement, slow and measured and calculated. He and Minion have done this many times before, Roxanne can tell.

Minion moves him away from the console, and Roxanne has to consciously stop herself from taking a step back. Few humans stand with their weight evenly distributed around their center of gravity, with their spines fully lengthened, and it's unnerving. Megamind's face is serene—also unnerving; he never looks like that, not even when he's asleep. His stance is oddly elegant, but…

It's funny. He looks more alien now, standing in the morning sunlight with only his shirt off, than he did last night, fully nude in the shadows.

His eyes slide open and he's already looking at her, but his face does not move and neither does his eyes, and the perfect balance and total lack of movement is—huh. Mildly upsetting. Roxanne knows this is incredibly silly but something about it just doesn't seem right somehow, pings _wrong_ on some instinctive level to her.

Megamind stares blankly for a few seconds, and then his eyes slide closed again. Roxanne swallows, unsettled and fascinated. Despite how strange she feels, she does still want to reach out and touch him; he hardly looks real. She doesn't often get to see him in this kind of light, and never with his shirt off.

"Okay, and hold still again for me…" Minion pulls out the pins in the same order he inserted them, starting at the bottom and working his way up. Only after the last pin is gone does Megamind open his eyes again and settle into a more natural stance.

He glances at Roxanne. There are dark smudges under his eyes and cheekbones, and the lines around his mouth are deeper than they usually are. "I'm sorry you had to see that," he says.

Roxanne has to take a minute to find her voice. "What just happened?"

"The stimulation triggers a release of tension in my body's fascia. I don't think it works on humans." He reaches for his shirt.

Roxanne shakes her head as she hands it to him. "Right, okay, but what _happened?_"

Megamind glances away, embarrassed color pinking his cheeks. Minion grimaces. "He can't sleep curled up like that, Miss Ritchi—he shouldn't, anyway. His muscles lock up harder and faster than yours do, and they take longer to relax. A knot in your back from one night's bad posture might take you a few hours to work out, maybe you have to sleep on it differently the next night? The same kind of tension in his neck would take about three days to work out on its own."

Megamind casts a sharp glance up at Minion. "A day and a half."

"Three of _your _days," Minion says, equally sharply, and Megamind rolls his eyes.

"I'll be fine," he tells Roxanne, then blinks. She's looking at him like she's never seen him before. "What?"

"Nothing, just…times like this, I wish I'd studied more anatomy or gone into medicine or something." She shakes her head again. "You've gotta be medical science's dream child. Compare the way your body works to the way our bodies work, see what's similar and what isn't…we could probably learn a lot from you."

"Probably," Megamind agrees, but there's a quieter note in his voice that Roxanne misses.

"I mean, seriously," she continues, "I'm glad you're here, of course, but how on earth did the government just…pass you by? I'd think they would have tried to take you ages ago. For—study, or—something, I don't know."

The silence that follows this makes her look around. Megamind's narrow face is drawn as if in pain. Minion's mouth is open like he wants to say something but can't find the words.

"They did," Megamind finally says, and sends Roxanne an awkward half-smile that doesn't reach his eyes, then looks away again. And then, before she can say anything, he turns his face towards Minion. "I'm—going to go get dressed. See you at breakfast."

There's another long silence after he disappears, walking towards the curtain using the same clipped movements Roxanne noticed when he left her with Minion in the pool room.

As his footsteps die away, Minion sighs. "Miss Ritchi, I am really, really sorry."

She blinks up at him, still trying to figure out what just happened. "What?" She shakes her head a little. "Wait, why are you sorry?"

Minion is visibly distressed; his fins are fanned as far as they'll go on either side and their edges are fluttering. "I meant to warn you ages ago. There just…didn't seem to be a time, and I wasn't sure how to broach the subject, and…well…" He trails off.

"I missed something." Roxanne looks from the curtain to Minion. "What did I say? What did he mean—they did? They—who's _they_—? Is this something I should already know, or…?"

Minion shakes his head. "No, no, there was no way you could possibly have known. We…don't talk about it." He sighs. "When we were six years old, some people came to the prison. Suits. Feds. The warden was away, out sick with the flu. They came in, flashed some papers, said a lot without saying much at all, and…they walked out with the boss." Roxanne feels her mouth fall open, and she closes it quickly, trying not to stare at him, trying to process that. Minion keeps talking. "I didn't go. Most of our uncles still thought I was a pet, but Guduza and Mitch—they did the bulk of raising us—they knew. Or, or suspected?" He swallows hard. "Uncle Guduza hid me. In the garbage can under some papers. He said to stay quiet no matter what I heard."

Roxanne blinks and shakes her head, waving at him to stop for a moment. "Wait, Minion, sorry—what do you mean, _still_ thought you were a pet?"

Minion shrugs. "It took me a long time to get the hang of talking like this," he says. "A really long time."

She recoils, horrified. "_And Megamind didn't tell anyone you were sentient?_ He just—he just let them think you were—"

"Oh, he made sure they did," Minion says. "We both made sure of it. It was very deliberate, Miss Ritchi. He explained it was for safety, and—and from what I remember—well, he had already read through the prison library by that point; maybe that's why. I don't know. But, he was…nervous. Worried. I think he was expecting those people to come for him." Roxanne stares at him. He was _six_, Minion just said, _six years old_ and expecting to be taken away? "Uncle Guduza certainly was. He was so angry. I've never seen him so—he was _so angry_. He kept saying—things; he kept saying we had to get him back. Uncle Billy wasn't around at that point or I think there would have been a jailbreak, and then we really would have seen some fireworks."

Roxanne has to sit down. Luckily, Megamind's swivel chair is within reach. She tugs it over and sinks into it, feeling numb.

Minion gulps again and continues. "The warden came back a week later. I think Uncle Mitch filled him in? Mitch and, and one of the nicer guards, I think—Dave? Was his name? He used to take Sir to the Y to swim in the pool, there. Anyway, there was a big fight that lasted two years and ended with the warden threatening to go to the press about some documents or footage or something he found. I don't know what happened, I don't know what he found or how he got it, but—it never made it into the press and we never heard anything else about it. Three days after the warden left to go to the newsroom, Sir was home. And we were going to school."

He sighs again and looks at Roxanne. "And that's all I know," he finishes with another little shrug. "He doesn't talk about it. Even to me. He never has. The warden hired psychiatrists to try and get him to talk, to try and help, but it never worked."

"Never?"

Minion shakes his head. "He wouldn't let them. It was the first time I ever saw him like that."

Roxanne should stop asking questions, but—she can't. "Like that, like—like what?"

Minion hesitates. "Well…mean?" He sighs. "He never was, before. And even after we started school, he did try to make friends. He _wanted _to make friends; I thought that was a good sign. But back at the prison he was just…he's brilliant, you know that," he says, and Roxanne nods. "Most of the shrinks didn't bother coming back after the third or fourth session. He played games with the ones that kept trying. And after he decided to go bad, he stopped hiding it. The only reason he wasn't expelled from school was because all the adults were scared stiff of him, too. He…sort of turned around a little while later, in high school, but by then his reputation was secure."

_Reputation_, Roxanne thinks. "And he never talked to you about anything? Never said anything?"

Minion looks at her, his expression unreadable. Finally he says, "I asked and asked. There was a, an incident? At school? They were all playing dodgeball and they hit him in the stomach and—he—well. Anyway. I kept pushing."

Roxanne bites her lip. "I'm assuming he did eventually tell you something?"

"He mentioned specifically the Declaration of Helsinki, the National Research Act and the Belmont Report, and Titles 21 and 45 of the CFR. He said he learned they don't apply to us." Minion swallows. "I…stopped asking. After that."

Roxanne presses a hand to her mouth, feeling sick. It's been a few years since she's had cause to think about any of those documents, but she's always had a good memory. "So, he…" Oh, god. "He's exempt from the statutes governing the ethical treatment of medical research subjects."

Minion is quiet. After a moment, Roxanne pulls her knees to her chest and looks up at him again. "And so are you," she realizes. "You—Minion, oh, my god."

"We both have papers, now," Minion says. "We're registered. So. In theory, we do have some protections. And, and nothing bad happened when they came for me. But—"

Roxanne's head snaps up. "When they _what?_"

"Sir got me back after only a week or so," Minion says quickly. "I was fine. Everyone was very up front about the whole thing and there was one guy who didn't let me out of his sight for pretty much the whole time; I was okay. And, and it means I did get registered. But…"

"But what a lot of good _being registered _will do you," Roxanne says, "if uncle sam ever wanted to ignore that."

Minion nods. Roxanne puts her forehead on her knees. Above her, Minion says, "Sir likes to insist that won't ever happen. I still worry."

"Yeah, I bet," Roxanne mumbles. "I…sorry, I—I know this is your cross to bear, but I'm going to be processing that for a while, I think."

Minion studies her for a moment, then sighs a little. He just dropped a heck of a bombshell, and he knows it. "Would you prefer to be left alone?"

She nods.

"Okay. I'm sorry to have hit you with this so suddenly. Breakfast in half an hour?"

Another nod.

"Okay," Minion says again, sounding a little bit lost even to his own ears. He flutters a hand towards her—he isn't quite sure whether to offer physical comfort or not—he touches her hair, her shoulder, then turns quickly and leaves.

Roxanne takes a deep breath and curls into the smallest ball she can on Megamind's chair.

Holy _shit_.

She's got to get it together. She can't be shell-shocked about this all day, that won't do anybody any good. But. She _really _did not see that coming. It's a whole other can of worms.

It explains a lot, though. Like why Megamind seems so uncomfortable discussing the specifics of his physiology. It probably also explains why he's so hung up on the whole _alien_ thing; the extent of his difference was hammered into him at a very young age, and not just by schoolyard bullies. And it more than explains why Minion brought him to her when he was injured, rather than a hospital or the prison. "_I can't take him to a hospital. They wouldn't know what to do with him and they'd call the government and if he can't defend himself_—"

She doesn't notice the quiet footsteps until they stop in front of her chair. Megamind's voice is quiet, calm. "Minion explained?"

Roxanne leans forward and wraps her arms around his waist. Pushes her forehead against his stomach, stares at the floor. "I had no idea."

"Not many people do," he admits. He actually sounds faintly amused. "It's okay. It was a long time ago. I'm over it."

She makes a small, disbelieving noise, and fists her hands against the back of his suit. Squeezes her eyes closed.

"Mostly," he amends, and runs his hand over her back, cards his fingers through her short hair. "Mostly over it. You caught me by surprise when I was already feeling kind of exposed. That's all."

Roxanne swallows. "Is there anything else I should know?"

Megamind hums for a moment, as if deep in thought. "There's a bomb under Washington, set to go off in the event of my untimely death. If it ever detonates, there will be a flash of light, a burst of confetti, and a little flag that says, 'Bang!' on it. But that's all."

"What?" Roxanne pulls her head back and looks up at him.

Megamind is staring down at her with a small smile and laughing eyes. "I really am okay."

When she still looks dubious, he actually snorts. "You're finding out about this now, but it happened when I was _six_, yes? I'm a grown-up now. Got my big-boy pants and everything. Really. I'm okay."

"Are you sure?"

Megamind grins and puts one hand on his chest and the other on his abdomen. "Cross my hearts and hope to die."

Roxanne blinks. "Hearts? Plural?"

"No. Not really. I only have one." His grin widens, and he spreads his arms in a grossly exaggerated gesture of I-don't-care. "Sure, it has six chambers, but who's counting?" He smiles back down at Roxanne. "Please get up," he says, petting his hand over her sleep-mussed hair again. "That doesn't look comfortable."

Reluctantly, Roxanne lets go of him and unfolds herself from the chair. Megamind's eyes are warm, and his thin face does look calm, so… "You're really okay?"

He sighs, puts both hands on her shoulders. "Yes. I am. I may be on the nuttier side of sane about some things," he says, and steps forward, slowly pulls her into his arms, "but I moved past that particular problem a long, long time ago." He pauses, then tilts his head a little, allowing, "Granted, it may shed some light on…certain of my eccentricities. I suppose I probably have one or two lingering hangups. But nothing too serious, Roxanne, I promise. And, honestly, the experience itself…it wasn't all bad."

Roxanne studies his face for a moment, her hands clasped over the small of his back. "Wasn't it?"

Megamind just blinks at her, and twitches his lips in a small smile that doesn't reach his eyes, and Roxanne remembers Minion saying _he doesn't talk about this_. But, to her surprise—

"I had a room of my own," he says. He sighs. "Sometimes Henny would bring me old textbooks. Her old medical textbooks, at first," he takes a deep breath, "and then…physics. Biology. Chemistry. I never knew where she got them." He smiles again, a little, but he isn't really looking at Roxanne anymore. "She used to talk to me. She sat with me. It wasn't all bad."

Roxanne swallows hard. "And," she says, her voice wobbling, "and Minion said…you have some kind of identification papers, now?"

Megamind nods and holds up a finger, signaling _wait_. Then he peels back one of the top edges of the blue lightning bolt on his suit, revealing a hidden pocket, and removes something rectangular and silvery-black. He hands it to Roxanne. "This," he says as she turns it over in her hands, "is the extraterrestrial equivalent of a green card."

_This certifies that Mega Mind R76-146 is legally a non-human person and combined citizen of the United Nations of Planet Earth._ She looks up. "Your name is literally Megamind? It's not an alias?"

He shrugs. "My people chose their own names. Besides, it's who I am. That card, there," he nods at it, "means I'm bound by your laws and entitled to the same—well, most of the same rights and protections that you are. Alignment-declared arches operate under section 170, but you already know that, of course." Roxanne nods. "Wayne has one of those, too," Megamind adds, "but his is more or less redundant because he has adoption papers. I think there are a few others like us—I don't know how many, exactly; I've never bothered to track them down. But, anyway." He takes the card back from her, slips it back into the hidden pocket in his suit. "I have never let it expire, and I _do not _want to find out what would happen if I did. But the general gist of it is, as long as I have that…" He trails off, shakes his head. "I'm safe." 

_S__upposedly_.

"Good," Roxanne says firmly. "You deserve to be safe." She swallows, remembering their conversation before, about _deserve_. "You deserve to be safe, my love. You deserve to be able to put that behind you." She reaches for him, pulls him into a tight hug.

Megamind closes his eyes and returns the gesture. He will never get tired of hugs, never. Not ever.

After a minute, Roxanne stirs. "Megamind?"

"Hmm?"

"Is there _really _a bomb under Washington?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "one or two lingering hangups," he says
> 
> It's funny -- when I wrote this chapter originally, I wasn't sure exactly how far to take that whole kidnapped-by-shady-government-types element of his backstory. I know now exactly how far that went. _Wheeeeee._


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the last chapter was super-duper short, so you get two for the price of one, today!

Minion looks up and jumps a little when Megamind walks into the kitchen. He hadn't been at all sure if Megamind would even bother coming to breakfast today, let alone with such a broad grin on his face. "You're here!"

Megamind throws himself into his usual chair at the kitchen table, hooks his arm over the back. "I'm not as fraggile as you think, Minion."

"Evidently not," Minion agrees. It's a nice surprise. "Where's Miss Ritchi?"

"Getting dressed. What's for eats?"

Minion rolls his eyes and pulls out a frying pan, a carton of eggs, and a waffle iron. The problem is over and done with, and his friend has done what he always does and skipped right along to the next order of business. "Bacon, eggs, and waffles. Over-easy?"

Megamind nods. "Please." After a moment of watching Minion arrange bacon in the pan, he asks, "Aren't, you know, _ingredients_ necessary to make waffles?"

Minion turns towards him, skillet in hand. "Sir, I may be your minion, but you are perfectly capable of making your own darned waffle batter. If you could do any of this, I would be making the waffles, but since you're incapable of turning eggs without breaking the yolk and you jump around when the bacon spits…" He stabs the spatula in Megamind's direction. "Get stirring!"

* * *

When Roxanne comes in, she stops dead in her tracks in the doorway, takes one look at both of them, and bursts out laughing. "What on _earth _is going on in here?"

Megamind pushes himself up off the floor and onto his knees, egg dripping down his face, and points an accusatory finger at Minion. "He started it!"

"I did not!" Minion sits up. His dome is dusted with flour, and there's sugar in the fur of the gorilla suit. He's holding another egg ready to throw. "He tripped me!"

Megamind turns and glares at him, his expression full of good-naturedly indignant rage. "I didn't! You _stepped _on me!"

"Well maybe if you weren't always in the way—"

"_I_ am never in _your _way!"

Minion gasps. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means if you didn't always hog the stove, other people might be able to reach the waffle mix!"

"Well maybe you should learn some patience!"

"Cold-blooded reptile!"

"Blue-skinned _freak!_"

Megamind recoils, eyes flashing. "Ohhhh, that is _it_," he fumes, and folds his arms over his chest. "We can't be friends." And, still kneeling on the floor, he turns his back on Minion in a huff.

Minion makes a face at his back, then glances at Roxanne, who has been watching the overacted tiff with uncertain amusement. He holds a finger to the front of his dome in an approximation of the signal for _quiet_, then dips the index finger of his other hand through the top of his dome, into the water.

And then sticks his wet finger in Megamind's ear.

Megamind leaps into the air like a jack-in-the-box, making a high-pitched chirping chittering sound, then dances away, flailing. He comes to rest behind Roxanne, rubbing his ear like mad and shuddering all over and hopping from foot to foot. "Ew ew ew ew _ew!_ Ear is wet, ear is wet, ear is wet!" He glares at Minion, who is too busy dying of mirth on the floor to even attempt a coherent response. "Minion, you're gross! That was uncalled-for!"

He looks at Roxanne, who's laughing harder than she probably ever has in her life, and scowls. "Traitor," he mutters, and stomps over to the stove.

When Minion and Roxanne finally manage to stop crying with laughter, Megamind has cleaned the egg off his face and is sitting primly on the kitchen counter with a mixing bowl in his lap, calmly licking waffle batter off a wooden spoon. He sends a withering glare in their direction. "Children. You are both children."

Minion sticks his tongue out at him.

"_So_ juvenile," Megamind tells him loftily.

Minion wrinkles his face. "Well, you still can't turn eggs."

"No, unfortunately I must leave the egg-turning to people who are good at it. And on that note, hey, Roxaaaanne…"

"Don't look at me," Roxanne says hastily. "I just scramble them, remember?"

"Oh, right." Megamind looks thoughtful for a moment, then turns to Minion, beaming. "Well, Minion, it looks like your job is still secure!"

Minion waves the spatula in a pantomime of glee. "Hooray for me! It's my lucky day!"

Roxanne slides into a chair, puts her head in her hands. "What have I gotten myself into? I'm dating an alien and his best friend and they are both _completely_ _nuts_."

Minion glances over his shoulder and busies himself with the eggs at the stove. "I'm flattered, Miss Ritchi, but I don't _quite_ think of you that way."

She looks up at him through her fingers. "You know what I mean," she says. "You're as much a part of my life as Megamind is."

Megamind scowls. "No he is _not_."

"Oh yes he is," Roxanne says, just as Minion says, "Oh yes I am."

Megamind huffs, but he can't hold his grin back anymore. "You two are impossible," he scoffs, and dips the spoon back into the bowl for another go.

"Hey, hey, hey, stop eating that! You have to make waffles out of it!" Minion reaches for the bowl, but Megamind holds it out of his reach. "Give it!"

"It tasteth fine like thif!" Megamind protests around the spoon in his mouth.

"You might not be able to get salmonella, but _she _can," Minion says sternly, then droops a little. "Oh, I don't know why I even bother. Go sit down, Sir. If the batter's finished, I'll take it from here."

"Thank you, Minion." Megamind trades him the bowl and the spoon for their plates of eggs and hops down from the counter. "I appreciate it."

"Oh _whatever_," Minion huffs, but Roxanne can hear him smiling.

"So," Roxanne says, deciding that now would be a good time to change the subject, "I talked to an old friend of ours yesterday."

Megamind freezes, eyes narrowed. "Did you really?" he asks carefully, glancing at Minion as he slowly drops into his usual chair at the table.

"Yes, I…spoke with Wayne," Roxanne says. _He's…worried about Minion knowing about Wayne?_ "You owe him, by the way; he made some good points in your favor."

Megamind squishes the middle of his egg with the flat of his fork until the yellow yolk splashes onto the plate. "Oh joy. Pass the salt?"

"He also said to 'say hey to the fish,' quote-unquote," Roxanne says as she passes it over to him with the pepper. "So, Minion, I don't know what it's worth to you, but Wayne says hello."

"It's worth about the weight of a pile of dog shit," Minion snaps, "but thanks."

Startled, Roxanne looks up. Megamind, conversely, has suddenly become very interested in his breakfast.

"I suppose I should say something like, 'tell him I said hi back next time you see him,' but I am not going to say that. Neither," Minion continues, taking another plate out of the cupboard, "will I ask whether or not he's doing well." He puts the plate down on the counter just a little too hard. There's a crack, then a tinkling noise that makes Roxanne flinch.

"I got it." Megamind is out of his chair and at Minion's side almost faster than Roxanne can blink, picking up shards of broken ceramic with quick, clever fingers and dropping them into the garbage can.

Minion closes his eyes. "Why," he says, after a moment, "can't he just _leave us alone?_"

Megamind glances up at him. "Minion, I know you don't like him, but—"

"Don't like him?" Minion stares down at his friend, incredulous. "Don't _like _him? He calls me 'the fish!' It's all he _ever _calls me!" He swallows, retrieves a whisk broom and a dustpan from beside the refrigerator. Megamind takes them from him without saying anything. Minion lets him. "It makes me want to punch 'the superhero' in his 'the face,'" he mutters. Then he scowls at Megamind again. "How long have you known he's alive?"

"A few weeks. Since right before Titan."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

Megamind looks up from where he's emptying the dustpan into the garbage. "Because I knew you'd react like this."

The waffle iron dings again to remind them that it's still on. Minion turns, but Megamind is in the way. "Go sit down, Minion. I think I can handle putting a waffle on a plate."

Minion nods and slumps into his reinforced chair across from Roxanne, looks at her. "I assume you've known about this since Sir found out?"

"Yeah, we found him a little over a month ago," she says slowly. "Wayne was…" She takes a deep breath. "He faked his death because he wanted to stop being a hero. Maybe there's more to that story than he said at the time, I don't know; I need to talk to him about it, but…" She sighs and shakes her head. "It sounded like he had a nervous breakdown, honestly; I haven't seen him that…like that in a while. And I'm sorry I didn't say something sooner, but I thought," she says, and sneaks a quick glance at Megamind, "well, honestly, I thought…"

"She thought I already told you," Megamind finishes without looking up. "And I should have."

Minion shakes his head. Sighs. "There…was…a lot going on." He doesn't sound happy. "This was after we…?"

Megamind nods and slides back into his chair, sets the waffle down on the table. Nobody touches it.

Roxanne doesn't ask. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize you hated him this much."

"I don't hate him." Minion sighs again. "I just…really, really don't like him. It's…maybe it's just a silly old grudge, but I don't like him." He pauses, frowns a little. "But I am glad he's not dead. Means you didn't really kill him, Sir. I assume that's why you went to the old schoolhouse the other day? To talk to him?"

Megamind flushes and speaks without thinking. "I needed to talk to somebody who wouldn't be able to convince me my plan was stupid."

Minion recoils at that and stares at him. "You…you talked to Metro Man instead of me? About a plan?" He blinks, sits back in his chair. Megamind drops his gaze.

Roxanne opens her mouth to say something, but her mind has gone suddenly blank and nothing comes out. The last thing she wants is for Minion to be upset, especially with Megamind. Minion really is just as much a part of her life as Megamind is, and she really does care deeply for him, and to see him look so confused and wounded about something Megamind said or did feels…weird. Bad. Roxanne doesn't like it. Of course, they must have had their share of disagreements over the years, but she's only ever seen them on good terms. They've always worked more or less as a unit, at least as far as she's ever seen.

The thought that her eggs are going cold presents itself. The thought that her eggs are going cold can go fuck itself. What, Roxanne is supposed to eat while this is happening?

"I'm sorry." Megamind swallows. "I should have talked to you, I know; then I wouldn't have—well." He glances at Roxanne, then looks tentatively back up at Minion and waits.

After a moment, Minion sighs. "Well," he says, "from what Miss Ritchi told me, it was an exceptionally stupid plan, Sir."

"Even Wayne thought it was stupid," Roxanne says quietly, and then, when Megamind and Minion both blink at her, she sighs. "He called me as soon as you left his place," she tells Megamind, and his expression goes slack with shock. "To warn me. I didn't get his message until after I got sick yesterday, unfortunately."

Megamind blinks at her a few times, startled and uncertain. "What?" His eyebrows tug upward, a tell Roxanne is learning to associate with vulnerability. "But he—he said—I thought he wouldn't—"

She sighs. "Yeah, he told me what he said about us not being together forever, too. Yesterday. Called me in kind of a panic about it, actually. Megamind, he said that to get you to confirm his suspicions, not because he believed it." She takes a deep breath and glances at Minion. "Actually, um. On that note—oh, but—not to detract from Minion's…anger?"

"No, please, detract away," Minion says, waving his hand with a resigned sort of sigh. "If you're going where I think you're going, Miss Ritchi, yes, please do. I'll…deal."

She blinks at him, concerned, but he nods encouragingly. Okay. So she turns towards Megamind and reaches out a hand. Slowly, he takes it.

(If someone told her, a year ago, that today she would be sitting in Megamind's kitchen, holding his hand while he looked at her with his heart in his eyes, and she would love him with all her heart and every cosmic inch of her soul, she probably would have decked them.)

(But here she is.)

"You know Minion and I had a talk, yesterday," she says, "he said I seemed like I was pulling away," and Megamind nods. Roxanne takes another deep breath. "We also talked a little bit about…um, the future? About goals. Relationship goals."

Megamind blinks twice. "The hashtag?"

Roxanne snorts in spite of herself. "No. In a literal sense."

"Ah," he says, and nods, his befuddled expression clearing somewhat.

"I just…Megamind, I want you to know, goals-wise, I'm not just playing games, here," she says. He frowns, nods again, but he still looks confused. Roxanne squeezes his fingers. "What I mean is, long term, is—oh and, and I probably should have said this last night," she realizes as nervousness rises in her throat like bile, "before we…thing. Stuff. Um."

Megamind looks suddenly spooked, and she shakes her head hard before he can jump in. Because, right. That's right. She needs to be clear; she needs to say what she means before Megamind's fears can kick in and overtake him and overshadow what she's saying. Shit.

She turns fully to face him so she can take both of his hands in both of hers. He startles at that, too. "I want you to know," she says, "I haven't dated anyone in a while, not really. But I have always wanted to settle down with someone. Someday. So I need to tell you, to be clear, that I am dating you to see if, if—if that's you. Okay? For the, the settling down. Rest of my life. Kind of thing."

Megamind stares at her, frozen.

"Megamind?"

He jumps, then gulps and forces words out. "Do you…honestly think there's a chance of that?"

_Yes_, Roxanne thinks, but what she says is, "It's…early. I don't know. But Megamind," and she catches his gaze and holds it, squeezes his fingers hard until he grips her in return, "I don't see any reason why there wouldn't be a chance. I love you."

He blinks a few times, hard. "I. Love you, too."

"I love you," Roxanne says again, firmly, "and I'm not…I'm not playing, here." She shakes her head. "That's not me. I want to see how far we can go, together. Okay?"

Megamind opens his mouth, then closes it again and nods hard. Roxanne nods, too, smiling, and starts to pull her hands back, but Megamind's grip tightens. "You could want that?" he asks, sounding somewhat strangled. "I—I've been trying not to think about—but—"

"I _don't know_," she says again. But she does hope it's forever, with him, and that's…hm. Yikes. Roxanne swallows hard against her trepidation and says, firmly, "But I want to find out."

He stares at her for a long few seconds, and then he stands up so fast his chair scuds back a couple inches. Roxanne jumps.

"I need a hug," Megamind announces, tugging on her hands and looking halfway frantic. "I need, I need a hug please."

Roxanne lets him pull her to her feet so she can hug him as hard as she can, and Megamind squeezes her into his arms and hooks his chin over her shoulder. Behind her, the waffle iron dings again, and Minion clatters a pan on the stovetop. Roxanne tips her head sideways to rest against his.

_Fuck_, but she loves this man. Megamind, who takes his dreams and writes them down and builds them, makes them real. Who built a whole new way of projecting a hologram in from outer space so he could show her his home star system. Roxanne will work with as many issues as she has to if it means she gets to be part of something that breathtaking.

"I love you," she murmurs. Megamind pulls back and looks at her, smiling, his eyes over-bright, and she clunks her forehead gently against his. Megamind makes a noise and nods against her, almost nuzzling. Aw. _He's such a love_, Roxanne thinks.

"Okay, you two," Minion says, "the bacon is done, and more eggs, and please eat them before they go cold, this time."

Startled, Roxanne laughs and turns away to return to her breakfast. "I would have eaten the cold ones," she exclaims, "you didn't have to throw them away!"

"I didn't throw them away," Minion says, sitting down as well. "These are them in front of me. I don't mind cold eggs, you know that."

Roxanne grins. "Yes, but don't you usually prefer them with a little more crunch?" she teases, and Minion flaps a fin at her and rolls his eyes.

"I eat them raw in front of you _one time_," he sighs.

Megamind clears his throat as he settles into his chair, then raises an eyebrow. "Did you really," he says, sounding surprised.

"Evening of the Titan incident," Roxanne says. "It was a long day." She picks up her fork. Frowns down at her plate. "Megamind, I—um." He blinks up at her, and she feels her cheeks heat. "I want to hold your hand," she says slowly, feeling absurdly embarrassed, "but I also want to use my fork. Any ideas?"

But—this is what she's supposed to do, right? Tell him she loves him? And this is one way to do that, right? It isn't like he's going to laugh at her for it, or sneer at her for needing him. She can do this. It feels cheesy, saying it out loud, but—yeah. She can do this.

"Oh. Hm." Megamind looks thoughtful for a second, then says, "How about—" and he sticks out his leg to put his foot behind hers and hook their ankles together.

"Perfect," Roxanne says, shifting her foot to accommodate and feeling a rush of affection for him. "Much better, thank you."

Megamind lets out a long breath, but he's smiling as he returns to his food, so that must be okay.

"Sir, question," Minion says, as they all finally start in on breakfast. "I think it's interesting that you don't resonate to the same frequency that I do, but Miss Ritchi does. We were trying to figure it out when you left, yesterday. What's your take on it?"

"Minion thought I might be biochemically syncing with him, the way you have," Roxanne adds.

Megamind blinks, but he doesn't dismiss the idea offhand the way Roxanne was expecting him to. "I suppose that's…possible," he admits. "Honestly, I'm not really sure how all that works; I don't do much with organics outside of the brainbots. But…it wouldn't be the reason you got sick." He shakes his huge head. "Minion is in a tank of water. A glass tank, with a fairly advanced filtration system. Any signals he was sending would have been completely blocked, even if distance wasn't a factor." He frowns a little. "But nobody else picked up on the problem, so _something _must be getting through to you."

"Do pheromones even work on humans?" Roxanne asks.

Megamind scoffs. "There's some controversy over that, but yes. Yes, they do." He closes his eyes for a moment, turns his face to Minion, and opens his mouth. His nostrils flare. He inhales, then closes his mouth, and Roxanne can see his throat working.

"What are you—" she begins, but Minion shushes her. Megamind turns towards Roxanne, then, and does the same thing in her direction, working his mouth afterwards and frowning.

Abruptly, his expression clears and he starts laughing. Minion and Roxanne glance at each other.

Megamind opens his eyes, still laughing. "Yes. You were right, there is a connection there. But the fact that the same symptoms manifested in both of you is pure chance." He shakes his head, still laughing. "I don't believe this. Okay. Well, it's nothing to worry about—if it wasn't for Anderson, I don't think any of us would have even noticed. Roxanne, can you hear the reactors?"

She blinks. "I don't…think so?"

"It's a hum," Minion says. "With another hum over top of it. But the louder one is like this," and he hums a soft interval, a descending third.

"Oh! Yes, I hear that all the time," Roxanne says, surprised. "I don't even notice it, anymore." She has to listen hard if she wants to hear it at all, these days, but it's always there: a gentle, rocking pulse so low it almost isn't even present.

"That's the cold fusion reactor," Megamind says. "Roxanne, your body is doing the same thing every human's does when it spends any excessive amount of time with another being—you're tuning yourself to us, and we're probably tuning ourselves to you. You've started producing heliotocine—not much of it, but enough to confuse your systems when the vibrations changed. Can you hear the reactors now?"

Roxanne nods.

Megamind nods back, smiling. "I can't, if I'm not in the water, and my ears are loads better than yours. You aren't hearing the reactors—you're feeling them, and that feeling is manifesting itself to you as sound." He busies himself with his eggs again, rubbing his foot absently against hers in a gesture Roxanne is pretty sure he doesn't even realize he's doing. "Heliotocine is a communication and recognition pheromone for Minion," he says, "but in primates, it's a neurotransmitter. A brain-signal. A rather specific one."

Roxanne shakes her head. "Please, just tell me what happened. I don't need to know why, I won't understand, it'll just confuse me."

Megamind nods. "Fair enough. The concentration of sodium salts in your perilymph has been altered."

Roxanne stares at him for a moment out of narrowed eyes. "Maybe you missed the part where that was supposed to make _more _sense, not less."

"It's an inner ear problem," Minion translates before Megamind can say anything further. "Congratulations, you now have a wider range of hearing than most other humans. Surprise!"

Roxanne glances uncertainly from Megamind to Minion and back again. "I'm not sure if this _is _something that happens to all humans when they spend too much time around their…um. Mates."

Megamind shrugs. "Neither am I. As far as I know, you're the only human who's spent enough time around me and Minion to be affected." His grin goes sharp and mirthless. "Yet," he adds. "We'll see what happens to those blockheads from the Technology and Change Management Department in a month or so."

"The who?" Roxanne blinks at him. He's finished his eggs and he's starting in on one of the waffles. "Why? Are you working with them particularly closely?"

"Yes." Megamind sighs and rolls his eyes. "I finished their database last night, _finally_. I have to meet with them again on Monday morning to present it."

"They won't let him be," Minion tells Roxanne in an undertone. The waffle iron dings again and he stands up. "He's swamped enough as it is without having to deal with these guys."

Megamind, however, shakes his head. "Minion, I can handle it. You know I can."

Minion retrieves the waffle with a pair of wooden tongs and puts it on a plate, then glances unhappily over at Roxanne, who looks back at Megamind. "No," she says. "No, you can't. When was the last time you slept?"

"I slept from five until seven-thirty this morning," he protests. "That's two and a half hours right there. Plus about three hours earlier last night." Roxanne sends him her best stop-avoiding-the-question look and asks again. He grips his fork harder and scowls, recalcitrant, but mumbles, "Thursday afternoon."

"For how long?"

"An hour or so?"

Roxanne's eyes narrow. "How _long_, Megamind."

Megamind sighs. "Forty-three minutes."

"You see?" Minion asks. He cuts the waffle into thirds, drops one third into his tank, and carries the other two to the table. Roxanne's chair squeaks a little bit as she leans back and stares at Megamind, shaking her head.

"There's just so much to _do!_" Megamind exclaims. "I don't have _time _to sleep!"

"Yes, you do," says Roxanne. "Megamind, you always have time to sleep. Good lord, haven't you ever heard of delegation? You don't have to do everything, you know."

He scowls. "Are you suggesting that I just abandon the city again? Let everything just fix itself?"

Roxanne has to roll her eyes at that one. "You're being dramatic."

"It's what I do best," he agrees.

"You don't have to abandon the city." Roxanne reaches over to grip his hand for a moment, which makes him pull up and blink at her. "But we—'we' being the so-called 'helpless' citizens of Metro City—_do_ actually know how to deal with destruction and mayhem on our own. We've gotten really good at it, over the years! Metro Man did a lot, but he was never a one-man construction crew. We do have systems and policies in place to regroup and reorganize when things go wrong." She squeezes his hand, then withdraws with a shrug and drags a waffle over onto her plate. "Granted, most of those haven't been put into action in this case because the extent of the damage was so extreme," she admits. "but the worst of it has already been fixed, thanks to you and Minion and the brainbots." She looks over at him and shakes her head. "You've already done more than any of us expected. We can take it from here. Really."

Megamind is quiet for a long time, thinking. Roxanne isn't sure what's going through his head, but if he's as embroiled in the city's governmental system as Minion seems to think he is, he'll already know about the secondary employment and payroll policies.

"Listen," Megamind says, finally, "I can't just leave the city to its own devices. Not when I caused the vast majority of the damage."

"I'm not saying you have to." _Note to self: Megamind thinks in terms of black and white. Grey areas and compromises probably won't occur to him without prompting_. "I'm saying…you're like a CEO. You sort out problems that your individual departments can't sort out on their own. But the individual departments _can _sort out _most _problems on their own—they're just using you as a crutch. Stop micromanaging, and stop letting people _use_ _you _to solve their problems for them. The TCMD can build their own damn database."

Megamind half-smiles. "I'll take it under advisement."

They chat about lighter things as breakfast winds down, until Megamind finally sighs and stands. "I need to check some things with the harbor filter," he says, sounding regretful. "It shouldn't take long, but…Roxanne, will you stay? Do you need to leave right away?"

She shakes her head. "Nope, I was thinking I'd stay and hang out here for a while, if that's okay with you."

He sends her a smile. "Always okay with me," he says. "Always always." He bends down for a kiss, but when he straightens his eyes are nervous. "And—we really are okay?"

Roxanne nods. "We really are. I promise."

"…Okay," he says. He nods back. Repeats, "Okay," and turns and heads off down the hall toward the main part of Evil Lair.

Roxanne gazes after him, biting her lip. Finally she glances at Minion. "It's going to be a while before he really believes that, huh."

Minion nods. Roxanne sighs and returns to finishing off her breakfast.

"It's nothing against you, Miss Ritchi," Minion says quietly.

"I know," she says. One night's conversation isn't going to solve all their problems. "I know. He…he said, last night while we were talking, he wasn't sure why I would…" She trails off, then takes a deep breath. "He wasn't sure what he could offer that I couldn't get with less heartache somewhere else." She shakes her head and stares down at her plate for a moment before frowning up at Minion. "Any tips for me?"

Minion shakes his head. "Just…bear with him. Keep being there," he says. Then he adds, "I should go talk to him, actually. Help with the filter. Will you be okay?"

She nods. "I have a phone call I need to make," she says. "Yeah, go do your filter thing, I'll get started on the dishes."

"Oh, you don't have to do that, Miss Ritchi," he says quickly, "I can handle them when I get back; this won't take long," but she shakes her head.

"Minion, please let me help," she says. "I need to do something useful, please let me at least _help_."

He studies her for a moment, then nods. "Thank you," he says. "Okay."

* * *

Megamind is loading a team of amphibious brainbots up with a couple toolboxes when Minion finds him.

"I can get the tools," Minion says, already taking them from the bots. "Bots, handle the sample kits."

Megamind is quiet. Minion isn't really surprised about that; from what he's gleaned over the past couple of days, his charge is in the grip of one of his longer downswings. And this is going to be a tough one to shake, Minion is pretty sure. Megamind has generally been pretty adept at not taking action based solely on his moods and insecurities, the past few years, but—well, Miss Ritchi is an unknown, in this context.

"So," Minion says, as they head for the freight elevator that will take them down to the underwater lake entrance to the Lair. "I assume you and Miss Ritchi had a talk."

Megamind nods.

"And…the two of you have worked through your differences?"

Megamind pauses. "Yes," he says slowly. "Yes, I believe…we have. I think so."

Minion turns and looks at him. "You think so."

"She says she forgives me," Megamind says. "I am trying to understand that." He swallows. "Failing that, I at least want to believe her. I, I know she isn't lying to me, I just…" He trails off.

"It doesn't feel real, Sir?" Minion offers.

"It doesn't feel like it can _possibly _be real!" he exclaims. "Why on earth would she forgive me for this? Let alone for Bernard! And everything else! I can't keep track of a cube, I can't rebuild a _fucking tower_ without _everything_ going wrong, I can't train a hero to thwart me, I can't—I can't—"

Minion sighs. _You can't cut yourself a break_, he thinks. "You can't blame yourself for Titan."

"I can and I will," Megamind snaps. "People _died_, Minion. You know not everyone evacuated. The city never evacuates completely."

"And their deaths are Hal's fault," Minion says flatly. "We created Titan, Sir, but our training was to make him a hero. To protect people! He chose to go a different route; you can't blame yourself for his choices."

"I can blame myself for his existence," Megamind says, equally flatly. "And I do." Minion puts a hand on his shoulder rather than reply, and Megamind sighs and rests his long hand on Minion's fingers, leans into the contact. "I know. I know. We move forward. I know. She forgives me; I don't have to know why. I just…" He shakes his head. "I need to write some things down," he mutters. "I'm hoping that will help."

Minion cocks his head. This is a new tack. "Write things down, Sir?"

"I'm trying something new." Megamind sighs. "I would leave me. Right now. So I, I need to remind myself that Roxanne…won't. And writing it down…maybe that will make it stick."

Huh. Not a bad thought. "Are you only writing that she won't leave?"

"That was the plan."

Minion swallows. "If…I might make a suggestion, Sir?" Megamind looks up at him. "Also write that you're worth staying for?"

Megamind's expression freezes.

"Write that one for me," Minion says. "If you can't write it for you. Write it for me. Oh—okay, Sir." Megamind has wrapped his arms around Minion as far as they'll go. Minion pats his charge's back a few times as the freight elevator clunks down.

"Thank you, Minion," Megamind says quietly, straightening. He keeps his head down as he peels his undersuit to his waist and knots the arms there to keep it from sliding over his hips. "You. Always know what to say."

"She really does love you," Minion says. "A lot."

"I know," Megamind replies. "I know she does. I just…don't know why. And I'm, I'm trying, Minion, I really am, I—last night, I really thought, I really did think she would stay! I really did! But today—I can't—it's running around in my head and—"

_I've heard that song before_, Minion thinks. "It's going to run around in your head, Sir," he says. "That's what these things do. You know that. All you can do is change what you do about it."

Megamind groans. "I know, I know. I just hate it. I love her. I _love _her." He swallows. "And she loves me," he says quietly. "She does. She loves me." He nods to himself. "She loves me and we're going to see how far we can go. We are."

"That's the ticket, Sir," Minion exclaims.

"She says we're going to see how far we can go," Megamind murmurs, frowning into the middle distance. "I can take her word for it. I _can_."

Minion looks at him but opts not to interrupt his train of thought. Megamind stands up a little straighter, nods again.

"I can," Megamind says again, firmly. "I love her. I can trust her. I do trust her." He sighs, and some of the tension goes out of his stance. "I do trust her. Come on, Minion. It'll go faster with both of us."

* * *

Roxanne clears the table and gathers all the dishes she can find, then piles them all into the sink to soak in sudsy water while she calls her brother.

His phone rings three times, and then a rough "H'lo?" crackles through. Roxanne grins.

"Hey, Drew. Sorry to call so early, sounds like I woke you up."

There's a brief scuffling noise. "Yeah, kinda. 'S okay." Her brother sniffs. "What's up? Everything okay? Mom said you or Jo was having some boy troubles."

"Yeah, but we fixed it. Everything's fine," she tells him. "Oh, and I'm seeing someone."

"No kidding?" He sounds sleepily surprised. "Anybody I know?"

"No, but when Mom asks, you can tell her he's a nuclear physicist and very well-established in the area." Roxanne doesn't know if it's a 'mom thing,' but her mother tends to be over-inquisitive about her children's partners. "Let her stew over that one."

Drew makes an interested noise. "Any chance of a name?"

She badly wants to give him one, but she doesn't want to saddle Megamind with a name he'll hate. Who knows how long they'll be using this persona as a cover? "No. Mom can just have fun trying to figure out which ivy-covered professor I've fallen for. Listen, I need a favor."

"A favor for Baby Sister Dearest?" He's grinning, she can tell.

She snorts. "That sounds like the title of a children's book."

"One of the mildly distressing kind, yes? Like _Go The Fuck To Sleep_. All right." He sniffs again, and Roxanne hears clinking, a yowl, a clatter, and a distant, muffled curse. "Sorry," he says, a moment later. "Stepped on the cat. Dropped the phone."

Roxanne blinks and tries not to smile. "Is he okay?"

"Little fucker just took a chunk out of my leg, so I don't really care at the moment, now do I? Tell me about this favor."

The cat's okay, then. She'd know if he wasn't. Drew complains constantly about the former stray, but he loves Spook like burning. "You still have access to the lab? Or, you know someone who does?"

There's a pause. "No, I won't sell you any meth."

"I don't want meth," Roxanne snaps, but she can't help but smile at her brother's never-ending humor. "I want to know if you can make me a timed-release caffeine-based pill—"

"Oh come on, gimme something hard."

"—that isn't a stimulant and won't keep you up all night," she finishes firmly. A short, stunned silence follows this request.

"So, let me get this straight," Drew finally says. "You want a caffeine pill that doesn't do what caffeine _does?_"

"It'd be great if it also wasn't habit-forming, but that's just if you feel like a challenge." She grins.

He blows out into the phone. In her mind's eye, Roxanne can see him running a hand backwards through his long hair and getting stuck in the tangles. "Well…yeah, okay, that's a challenge. No promises on the habit thing; caffeine is a habit same as anything else. Can I ask why you want such a fantastically _useless _pill?"

"Much good may it do you," she tells him cheerfully. "But we'll probably have to take it slow, I don't know what part of the caffeine molecule helps, specifically. Or why."

"Ooo, interesting." He's grinning. "Okay, hell to the yeah, I'll see what I can do. But this totally goes against policy, you know—me using the lab for pet projects."

Roxanne grins and shifts the phone to her shoulder, holding it in place with her ear as she starts clearing the table. "Oh, like you don't already freelance on company resources."

"Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I goof off on company time." Then he sighs. "Though really it's more because there's only so much you can do while your tests are running, boredom is physically painful, and I don't have much interest in tabletop roleplaying games."

Roxanne snorts. "Glad I could help. What's your rate for this kind of thing?"

"Oh, please, you're family," he scoffs. "And it's not like you ask for this stuff often." He hums for a second. "So if—hmm. Tell you what, I'm gonna try a few different formulas. Say…three to start out with. I'll send you enough for two weeks each. You tell whoever is taking this to keep a journal of anything they feel might be different, good or bad or whatever, any stuff that might be side effects. Hopefully that'll help narrow down what we're looking for in round two if none of the first three work. I'm assuming based on your specs, caffeine is a stimulant for this person? That's why you want it not to be a stimulant?"

"Yeah," Roxanne says, startled at how practiced he sounds. She already knew he does this kind of thing with some frequency, but…huh. "Yeah, it…if that turns out not to be possible, then…eight-hour doses? is that doable?"

"Once we nail down what works and have a decent understanding of dosage and how it's absorbed, yes." He sounds completely confident. "You don't want twelve-hour?"

Roxanne hesitates. "No," she finally says, thinking of Megamind's sleep schedule, thinking she needs to talk with him about that sooner rather than later. "No, definitely eight-hour."

"Huh. Okay. Well, I'll do my best! You came to the right person, you know; most other neurometabolic quasimads don't give a crap about brain-body stuff. I do my best not to do anything that causes undue strain on my clients' other systems."

Roxanne blinks. "Other systems…?"

"Yeah. You know. Liver, kidneys, gut—that kind of thing. So let me know as soon as possible if your friend has any allergies or sensitivities I should be aware of, anything that might point to any unique metabolic quirks."

_Unique metabolic quirks_. "Will do," Roxanne says, despite the fact that Megamind's whole metabolism probably counts as significantly quirky by human standards. "I'll talk to him."

"Guessing this guy drinks a lot of coffee?"

"More than he probably should," Roxanne says. "He's trying over-the-counter caffeine for now, but…his sleep schedule is already pretty screwy."

"Is it," Drew says. "Huh. And how's Megamind, these days? Heard you did another interview with him a couple weeks back."

Roxanne sighs. "And where did you hear that."

"Where else? Mom was complaining."

"Oh, my god." She slumps, rubs the bridge of her nose. "Megamind is not that bad. I swear I don't know what her deal is but, _god_, I'm done hearing about it."

Her brother hums. "You and me both. You could let her win, of course."

"Fuck that," Roxanne snaps. It's a knee-jerk reaction; she knows it wasn't a serious suggestion, but still. "Ugh. I'm just sorry she keeps coming to you over it. Like you can do anything." She snorts. "Like you _would_ do anything."

"Yeah, I'm really not sure how she missed the part where basically my whole lab is supervillain stans."

She hums. "With a surprisingly big Megamind contingent, if I recall." It's one of the reasons why Roxanne would prefer not to hide her boyfriend from her family—as much as she doesn't mind hiding, her brother is going to be wildly jealous and she can't wait to see his reaction. But.

"And I am their king, mwahaha." Drew yawns. "Okay duckling, I gotta go. I told Kennett I'd pick up his shift this morning and traffic is going to suck. And…hm. Caffeine. Okay, so, it's a xanthine alkaloid…"

Minion clanks back in then, grinning from ear to ear. "Miss Ritchi, you have to see—oh, sorry." He holds up the newspaper. _Megamind allies with Truth and Justice to save Metro City_—_again!_

Roxanne snorts. "Sounds good, Drew. Thanks for your help, I'll let you know about allergies when I can."

Her brother is already muttering to himself about his new project. "What? Oh, right, okay cool thanks," he says, and goes right back to thinking aloud. "…I could attach something like adenosine—no, that would just cause drowsiness. Maybe if I bound an inhibitor to the bit that _mimics_ adenosine? That could work…"

"Goodbye, Drew," Roxanne says loudly, and hangs up. In response to Minion's inquisitive frown, she says, "My brother. He works in a chem lab in San Francisco. You'd like him, he's nuts."

"If you say so," Minion says. "You should read that article. It's hilarious. They're calling you and Akos 'Truth' and 'Justice.' What did you _say _to that photographer?"

"Anything to make her shut up," Roxanne says with a grin, and squirts a little more dish soap into the hot water in the sink as Minion steps up beside her. "It's not a bad tagline, you have to admit."

"You're the news expert," he says. Then he picks up a dishtowel, hesitates—and offers it to her. "Um…I'll wash, you dry?"

Roxanne smiles. Baby steps, it seems. "Sounds like a plan. Where's Megamind?"

"He wanted to check on a couple things with the reactors while he was down there," Minion says, reaching into the sudsy water. "I told him the brainbots have them in hand, but I think that thing with Anderson yesterday kind of spooked him."

"Ah." She can't blame him. Actually, she'll have to talk to Megamind at some point about showing her how the reactors work. Roxanne is good with numbers, and reactors are just applied mathematics, right? They can't be impossible to learn. Not with Megamind to explain them.

Minion rinses off the frying pan and hands it to her. "Minion," she says, drying it, "I wanted to say…about what you said in the pool? I would miss you, too."

After a startled couple seconds, he says, "Oh. Well. Your timing on telling me that could have been better, Miss Ritchi." He huffs a sigh, but his tone is chagrined. "I would like to hug you, and now my hands are covered in soap."

Roxanne snorts. "Oh, you big dork. Hug me anyway; my shirt will dry."

Minion shuffles sideways and puts a furry arm around her, squeezes gently. Roxanne squeezes back. She's not sure what the benefit will be to him, but she's honestly never seen Minion outside the gorilla suit until yesterday. And it seems like hugs are as much a gesture of affection for him as they would be for anyone else, so…

"By the way," she says, glancing up at him as he returns to the dishes, "if I'm referring to you as _size-noun_, are you big or little?"

"You mean, am I a big dork or a little dork?" He grins down at her and winks cheerfully. "I'm both! Whichever sounds funnier in the moment. Bonus points if you manage to refer to me as both in the same conversation around someone who isn't in on the joke."

She laughs and starts a stack of clean plates on the countertop beside her.

All the years she was getting kidnapped, she never expected to find herself regularly sharing a bed with her kidnapper and being completely happy about it. But as much as she's complained about waking up in Evil Lair over the years, she's really starting to love mornings here. Even on days when Megamind is up and about before Roxanne wakes up—which is most days—he's always happy to come back and snuggle as soon as she texts him.

And even when Megamind himself isn't around, the company is always impeccable. Roxanne was never expecting to find herself doing dishes side by side with an alien on a Sunday morning and being perfectly content when she moved back to Metro City years ago, any more than she was expecting to occasionally wake up to a different alien wrapped around her like a starfish. But standing next to Minion at the kitchen sink, joking and teasing back and forth about nothing in particular as they wash the dishes, Roxanne honestly cannot think of anywhere she would rather be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> almost done! all that's left is the epilogue!


	16. Epilogue

A couple weeks later, an overnight package arrives for Roxanne. There's a card lying on top of the packing peanuts inside—it has a little old man with flyaway hair and scorched eyebrows holding a smoking test tube on the front. Roxanne grins and opens it. The handwriting is tiny and legible only to those who know how to read it, and the letter takes up the entirety of the inside of the card. It is also written in a giant spiral, so that Roxanne has to keep turning the card around and around and around in order to be able to read it.

_Hey Duckling,_

_Here's my first few attempts at that pill you wanted. I tested them on myself before sending them to you, and noticed absolutely no effects whatsoever, but these are definitely caffeine-based (mostly) and that's what you wanted. Maybe sometime you'll also let me in on the joke? I could just as easily send you sugar pills. I hear they work miracles and they are a lot cheaper and easier to make._

_Anyway, let me know if any of these work for you. They should be good for around eight hours each, and I gave you enough for two a day, two-week runs per trial. But then, I don't actually know if they work or not, so. Let me know how effective they are; I had to guess at dosage._

_I hear you'll have rain by the time you get this box, something about a freak storm building off the lake. Could you send some my way? The weather here is completely beastly, I swear I haven't seen a cloud in two weeks. The sun is having a grand old time beating the stuffing out of everyone down here. Honestly, just build a roof over the whole sky and give the world a break, right? I'm over it._

_Here's a riddle for you, let me know if you figure it out. It's an easy one, you can thank me later. You know the rules: No Googling, and if you ask for help you have to tell where you got it. Oh, and Mom thinks you're dating a Professor J. Johnston, at Metro U, but my money's on Dr. Weinstein. You did say ivy-covered._

"_What did the bartender say when oxygen, hydrogen, sulfur, sodium, and phosphorous walked into his bar?"_

_Good luck! I'm sending you a big, sweaty hug._

_Drew_

Roxanne laughs. She has no idea what the joke is, but Drew's jokes are always like that—chemistry-related and probably building up to an awful pun. She puts the card down on the coffee table. A quick rummage through the packing peanuts, and she pulls out small black bottles, numbered one, two, and three. All three are full of white, oval pills, also unlabeled. Highly suspicious. Hopefully also highly effective.

She picks up her phone, already smiling, and calls Megamind. His cell phone goes straight to voicemail: _Hi, you've reached Pavel Chudakov, I can't talk now, leave a message and I'll call you back. …What? Wait, which button is—_

_Beeeeep_.

"Hey, my love, it's Roxanne, it's about 5 pm. I have something for you. A surprise. You should stop by my apartment later if the storm's not too bad."

She hangs up the phone and pulls the curtains concealing her French double doors to the side. Dark clouds are boiling in off the lake. "You should go to San Francisco," Roxanne tells them. "Where you're wanted."

"Oh snap," says a voice, very quietly, behind her. She spins, her heart pounding, then laughs.

"Megamind, good lord…"

His shoulders shake with silent laughter. "I was already on my way over. Had your door open when you called."

She presses her lips together in mock severity. "And you just stood there and let me leave a voicemail, how rude! Did you break my lock?"

He smiles and puts her brother's card down carefully back where he found it, takes off his cape and collar and drapes them neatly over the back of her sofa, then moves over to her and kisses her softly on the mouth. "I never break locks," he murmurs.

Roxanne chuckles and knocks her forehead against his. Outside, thunder rumbles long and low. "Did you drive here?"

"I'm afraid I walked." He looks over her shoulder, out of the glass doors that lead to her balcony. Sheets of summer rain scour the deck and ripple down the panes.

Roxanne smiles. "Pity. I guess you'll have to stay here until the rain lets up."

"I suppose I will. What a shame." He moves away, presses his nose and both hands flat against the glass and peers out. "Trouble is this weather isn't natural," he admits sheepishly. "I _may _have sat on the remote for the storm generator a week ago."

He'll probably always be like this—breaking and entering and entirely smooth about it, then goofy thirty seconds later. He really isn't all that predictable.

"How long will it last?" Roxanne wants to know.

Megamind looks up for a moment, frowning. "Well, I sat on it for three hours, so…twelve. Twelve hours, more or less."

She looks at him, unsure whether to laugh or shake her head despairingly. "Megamind…"

"Don't worry, I got all the ships in off the lake, and it's a fairly localized storm. We'll be okay. And it'll be good for the late-summer crops south of town." He leans harder against the glass. Roxanne's brain presents the thought that she could lift the latch on her door and send him stumbling out onto her balcony as a joke, but she remembers him standing in a downpour once before and she's pretty sure that particular trick would send the wrong message. Bad brain. That's a mean prank.

But what counts is what she does with the thought, so she comes up behind him and wraps her arms around his narrow waist and presses a kiss to the slope of his shoulder. Megamind smiles and leans back against her, leaving two handprints and a mushroom-shaped nose-print on the glass. "You remember the last time it rained like this?" she asks. He doesn't reply.

They watch the rain together in silence for a moment, and then Roxanne strokes a hand up his chest and kisses him again, pressing her lips to the skin behind Megamind's ear. He gives a little full-body shiver, then laughs. "Hey, watch it," he scolds, even as he reaches behind himself to grip her wide hips and pull her closer. "That's sensitive! You're so _distracting_."

"Mmm, I know." She grins. "It's better than what happened last time," she says, and Megamind turns his head and looks at her.

Then he smiles. "Infinitely better," he agrees, and turns in her arms so he can kiss her properly.

"Shall I show you what I think of your contents, Mr. Megamind," she teases when he pulls away, her voice low as she strokes his back with her thumbs. "Now that I've had the chance to read you a little? You're my favorite book, do you know that?"

Megamind's eyes are sparkling. He bites his lip, then ducks forward and steals another kiss, smiling against Roxanne's mouth. Outside, the thunder rolls again, followed by lightning. The storm is getting worse.

Neither of them notices.

* * *

_Hi Drew,_

_The meds work! Sort of! And thank you. They do vary in effectiveness—my friend's notes are attached. He was very appreciative. I'll let you in on the joke a little bit after Christmas, I think_. _In the meantime, once we've nailed down a formula that works (probably the second set of pills, or something similar), you can send me instructions on how to make them and I can take over from there. I have access to a fairly extensive lab, and you know me_—_I'm not all that bothered by legal._

_Tell Mom to keep guessing on the boyfriend thing. You should keep guessing too. You're not even close._

_Speaking of whom, the answer to your riddle is OH SNaP, courtesy of said boyfriend, who would like to request a more difficult puzzle next time. And you can have all the rain you want; we have plenty!_

_Ew, you're gross, don't touch me._

_Love,_

_Roxanne_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Roxanne called Minion a dork _when really it is she who is the dork_
> 
> (the secret is they are all dorks)
> 
> (and very cheesy)
> 
> (i love them)
> 
> Thank you for reading!!! I'm going to try and stick to a chapter-a-week schedule for the next installment, because the chapters in Hallows Eve are a bit longer and I don't want to fall behind. Wish me luck!


End file.
